The specter of “rising tensions” or in Taiwan or ever-worsening relations with China as a product of ramped up cross-strait anxiety is a trope of reporting about Taiwan which urgently needs to go away...
Some claim that the KMT only needs to "localize" to survive its current political crisis. But the truth is that the KMT has already "localized" and this only took the party in an extreme pro-unification direction. We can observe this in the example of Hung Hsiu-Chu herself...
Renewed contestation has erupted regarding Taiwan’s name, with China lodging protest over the renaming of Taiwan’s de facto embassy organization in Japan from the “Interchange Association (Japan)” to the “Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association”. Is this a sign that the Tsai administration plans on pushing for greater use of the name "Taiwan" internationally in the near future?...
A battle seems to be ahead for the position of KMT party chairperson. Current party chair Hung Hsiu-Chu aims to hold onto her position for elections next year, but she faces strong challenges from within the party, as a product of the KMT's internal crisis which has only accentuated under her leadership of the party...
The controversy caused by a Nazi-themed cosplay skit performed by students at Hsinchu Kuang-Fu High School has provoked international outrage as well large domestic responses. We might take a look at what these responses reveal...
Mass demonstrations by both pro-marriage equality and anti-marriage equality protestors took place outside the Legislative Yuan today, while the end result of a meeting by the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee within the Legislative Yuan was a marriage equality bill being sent to the legislative floor...
The unpredictability of American foreign policy under Donald Trump seems to be summed up in a nutshell with recent Tweets by Trump suggesting that America will turn towards stockpiling nuclear arms, never mind the potential for disaster...
We might review some of the arguments of queer activists in Taiwan who have indicated a stance against marriage equality. Namely, while there are some valid points to be made, sometimes this returns to a problem of ultra-leftism...
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.