Many questions remain to be answered in coming days with the indictment of former president Ma Ying-Jeou on charges over leaks of classified information regarding the 2013 wiretapping of Ker Chien-Ming...
Recent declarations by the Islamic State that it will target China in retaliation for its oppression of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang will probably only be met by further Chinese restrictions on the region. But China's responses are illustrative of to what extent China uses the discursive terms of America's War on Terror to justify its suppression of the Muslim majority Uyghur population in Xinjiang and other parts of China...
The annual anti-nuclear march in Taiwan, commemorating the Fukushima incident in Japan, took place yesterday, with environmental groups, Third Force parties, youth activists, and other civil society groups marching through the streets of Taipei, Taitung, and Kaohsiung...
One of the paradoxes of uncritical pro-Americanism on the part of some Taiwanese independence advocates is that sometimes they do not actually know the most about American politics. One finds that assessments of Donald Trump remain wildly off the mark, due to lack of knowledge about the political forces which have arrayed themselves behind him and the man himself...
The war on drugs under the Tsai administration seems set to continue, with recent public scandals regarding drug use on army bases, the scandal caused by a drug-related death after a party at the five-star W Hotel in Taipei, and major drug crackdowns. Very likely, the Tsai administration is determined to make harsh drug policy enforcement one of its political achievements...
The revelation that at least eighty of Taiwan’s 157 universities have signed agreements with China promising not to discuss unification/independence issues or the issue of “one China, one Taiwan” in class has rocked the nation in the past week. Among these universities are Taiwan’s leading educational institutions...
This afternoon saw a demonstration and the performance of traditional dances by Taiwanese indigenous and their allies on Ketagalan Boulevard, in front of the Presidential Office Building. The issue at hand was backsliding by the Tsai administration on vows to restore traditional indigenous territories, something which was promised by the Tsai administration as part of its historic apology to indigenous on behalf of the ROC government in August of last year...
That public discussion has been disproportionately large regarding the posting of what would probably be approximately a dozen or so American marines to AIT’s new facilities in Neihu illustrates the highly charged nature of the diplomatic relationship between America and Taiwan in recent months...
A bizarre delusion, which seems to be held by many English language commentators on Taiwanese politics with a pro-Taiwan stance, is to somehow believe that Trump has had a consistent position on Taiwan throughout and that his stance on Taiwan have never changed...
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.
