South China Seas disputes are back in the news after a ruling by the UN Permanent Court of Arbitration by the Hague in favor of the Philippines, between disputed territorial claims between China and the Philippines...
There are those in Taiwan who have hailed Brexit as a positive, seeing false equivalency between Brexit and achieving a referendum on Taiwanese independence from China. But this is to fail to understand that Brexit indicates a rightward political shift, not only in European, but global politics...
Labor issues are not out of the news just yet. In fact, it seems very likely that the Tsai administration is headed for a conflict with Taiwanese civil society, youth activists, and labor unions very soon regarding labor laws regulating migrant workers and worker vacations...
Recent protests in Hong Kong marking the 19th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from British control to Chinese control were another occasion for the internal conflict between Hong Kong’s political camps to demonstrate itself...
The fall of former KMT spokesman Yang Wei-chung would be another nail in the coffin for a KMT unable to reform, with his recent expulsion from the party...
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.
