Despite the Abe administration becoming increasingly embattled, electoral challenges to the Liberal Democratic Party do not seem set to emerge anytime soon. Which way forward for left politics in Japan?...
Will China be ready to invade Taiwan anytime soon? While an important question to ask, such assessments need to come from rational assessments founded upon detailed knowledge of China, not alarmism...
With recent news reports that North Korea has developed the missile capacity to strike the United States, tensions are at a high in the Asia-Pacific once again. What now, for America, China, South Korea, and other countries which may be caught in the fray, such as Taiwan? Namely, the possibility of dangerous and unpredictable actions from the Trump administration is high...
Anger has ensued from members of Taiwanese youth activists regarding public reactions to 500 EVA flight attendants taking the day off on Sunday in anticipation of a typhoon, something which led to the cancellation of 50 flights. This has been labelled a “strike” by many media outlets, although EVA flight attendants were not actually striking, per se, but using leaves of absences...
With the recent announcement by FoxConn CEO Terry Gou that FoxConn would be building a $10 billion USD LCD panel plant in Wisconsin in a high-profile press conference with Donald Trump, some in Taiwan question what Gou exactly aims to accomplish with this deal cementing ties between his company and the Trump administration. Given Gou’s close ties with both the KMT and CCP, is Gou acting on behalf of China? Of the KMT? Both? Neither? One wonders...
Recent actions by members of the pan-Blue camp once again go to show how the pan-Blue camp has largely failed to reckon with its authoritarian past in demonstrating its fundamental disrespect for the institutions Taiwanese democracy. We can point to widely discussed recent events as an example of this, as seen in accusations of Facebook censorship by the DPP as part of a "Green Terror" and an incident in which a China Times intern took to throwing water balloons at pan-Green legislators...
With rumors of an impending shuffle in China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, including the replacement of Zhang Zhijun as its head, this may signal a shift in China’s attempts to lure Taiwan back into its fold. But while it is anyone’s guess as to what China’s next steps will be, it may be, in fact, hasty to assume that this means that China has realized that its Taiwan strategy has failed and so wishes to change tack...
Following the recent disqualification of Hong Kong legislators, it remains a question as to how Hong Kong and Taiwan can collaborate to aid each other...
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.
