The Chunghwa Telecom Union demonstrated in front of Chunghwa Telecom headquarters in late November against low wages. Although the union threatened a strike on election day on November 26th, this was later called off...
Lam Wing-kee, the only one of the Hong Kong Causeway Bay booksellers to remain free, applied for permanent residency in Taiwan last month. This application is on the basis of being a professional in arts and culture...
A solidarity rally for China’s “A4 Revolution” was held in Liberty Plaza in Taipei this afternoon. This took place on the heels of a week that saw at least four solidarity rallies for protests in China in Taipei, two of which were framed as vigils for the victims of the fire in Urumqi that sparked the protests...
Migrant worker advocates have reacted with anger against new regulations rolled out by the Ministry of Transportation and Communications requiring blue-collar migrant workers to have the consent of their employer in order to purchase electric bicycles. The new regulations began to be implemented on November 30th, with the form that employers need to fill out for their employees to purchase electric bicycles released on November 18th...
It was only a matter of time until tankies–leftist apologists for authoritarian regimes such as China or Russia–weighed in on the current protests in China. The most recent example of this in Anglophone discourse may be Tricontinental Institute researcher and Dongsheng News collective Tings Chak’s appearance yesterday on Breakthrough News’ “The Socialist Program.” The program was hosted by Brian Becker, founder of the ANSWER Coalition and one of the founders of the PSL...
Videos that went viral in China last month showed FoxConn workers fleeing factories in Zhengzhou, the capital of Henan, because of mandated lockdowns because of COVID-19. FoxConn is the Taiwanese-owned company that plays a large role in global iPhone production and is one of Taiwan’s major tech giants. FoxConn founder Terry Gou is one of Taiwan’s richest men, Gou having made forays into politics in recent years such as seeking the KMT’s presidential nomination in 2020...
The results of nine-in-one elections today resulted in the KMT regaining control of traditional territories in Taoyuan, Keelung, and Taipei, while edging out the DPP competition. On the other hand, the DPP held onto its own traditional territories in southern Taiwan in Tainan and Kaohsiung. However, the DPP clearly was unable to gain new ground or to hold onto traditional pan-Blue territory that it had captured in past years...
The 2022 midterm elections have, in some ways, been characterized by the absence of any animating core issue. In past years, the national referendum has allowed for local elections to crystallize around specific issues. For preceding elections, this has ranged from legalizing gay marriage to nuclear energy, opening up Taiwan to pork imports from the US, and the name that Taiwan would compete in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics under. This year, the only issue being voted on is that of lowering the voting age from the current twenty years old to eighteen years old...
Cross-strait relations are not the dominant frame of this election cycle. Namely, nine-in-one elections, which serve as midterms between presidential elections, are primarily about local issues rather than cross-strait issues. Cross-strait relations are for Taiwanese, after all, largely a matter of foreign policy...
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.
