The intersection of art, culture, and politics in Taiwan can be quite surprising at times. This continues to be self-evident in 2018 local elections, in which election campaigning from youth activists turned politician remains highly innovative in nature...
The most popular of the slate of referendums which are to be voted on this Saturday, the referendum on what name Taiwan will participate in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under, has come under increased scrutiny in the past week. Namely, the International Olympics Committee has warned that Taiwan could be banned from participating in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics if the referendum is successful...
There has been heightening concerns over Chinese election interference in the last few weeks. What are the incidents that have taken place which are cause for concern?...
The third televised debate on nuclear energy took place on November 12th, with Huang Shih-hsiu (黃士修), the initiator of the referendum on whether Taiwan should remove legal provisions for Taiwan to be nuclear-free by 2025, faced off against Hung Shen-han of the Green Citizen Action Alliance. The debate quite directly reveals how the KMT has been a major force in pushing for the referendum...
What emerges from a televised debate held on November 15th between New Power Party (NPP) chair Huang Kuo-chang and Tseng Pin-chieh, a professor at the College of Law at National Chung Cheng University, should be highly concerning to supporters of marriage equality in Taiwan. Namely, Tseng’s comments in the debate are highly indicative of what the aims of anti-gay groups in Taiwan are in their referendum against marriage equality, what their current strategy is, and what their endgame likely is...
The two Kaohsiung mayoral debates that took place on November 10th and yesterday, on November 19th, raise a number of questions going forward. In particular, KMT mayoral candidate Han Kuo-yu did not perform as well as one would have expected in either debate and so it is to be seen whether the debate will negatively affect his election chances. On the other hand, it is also highly possible that Han voters will simply disregard Han’s debate performance...
On October 24th, New Bloom editor Brian Hioe interviewed Radical Party candidate Wang Ying-xin, who is running in the Shilin-Beitou area of Taipei. This is part of New Bloom's ongoing series of interviews with independent city councilor candidates, as part of its special 2018 election coverage...
Brian Hioe is one of the founding editors of New Bloom. He is a freelance journalist, as well as a translator. A New York native and Taiwanese-American, he has an MA in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and graduated from New York University with majors in History, East Asian Studies, and English Literature. He was Democracy and Human Rights Service Fellow at the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy from 2017 to 2018 and is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the University of Nottingham's Taiwan Studies Programme, as well as board member of the Taiwan Foreign Correspondents' Club.
