Ahead of the inauguration of Lai Ching-te as the new president, the KMT has continued to call for the revival of the Special Investigation Division of the Ministry of Justice...
Taiwanese civil society groups held a press conference in the legislature on February 2nd to call attention to the third anniversary of the coup in Myanmar, which overturned the democratically elected government and instituted a military regime...
Environmentalists called on the government to take further action against carbon emissions ahead of the Lunar New Year. In particular, the Environmental Justice Foundation and other groups filed a constitutional lawsuit calling for swifter action and a clearer timeline for action on environmental goals. The Climate Change Response Act was criticized for not having short-term and medium-term goals in terms of action to be taken on climate change...
The Chinese government announced earlier this week that it would be ending the current “offset measure” for the M503 flight route, as well as beginning eastbound operation of routes W122 and W123. The Taiwanese Civil Aviation Administration has criticized this move as unilateral in nature, in reversing course on previous negotiations between Taiwan and China...
After meeting with both the DPP and KMT in the preceding days, the TPP announced this afternoon that its eight legislators would be voting for Huang Shan-shan for the president of the legislature. This means that the TPP has declined to side with either the DPP or KMT when it comes to voting for the Legislative Yuan president...
Strikes for EVA Air and the Taiwan Railways are off ahead of the Lunar New Year, following negotiations by unions in both EVA and the Taiwan Railways Corporation with the management of both companies. If the strikes had gone ahead, this would have posed significant disruption to travelers seeking to return home for the holidays...
Young supporters of Ko Wen-je’s TPP have recently been criticized as “cult-like” after videos of high schoolers selling “Little Grass ID cards.” The ID cards are sold for 500 NT each, leading to criticisms of the TPP that it is brainwashing children and that it is seeking to raise money in the manner of a direct sales scam...
A number of union groups demonstrated last week to call for inclusion in talks over the new incoming government’s labor policy. This included among Taiwan’s largest coalitions of organized labor groups. The demonstration was fronted by the Taiwan Confederation of Trade Unions, which protested alongside the Kaohsiung City Confederation of Trade Unions, National Federation of Teachers Unions, Taipei Federation of Trade Unions, and Taiwan Federation of Financial Unions...
The contest over who will be the next speaker of the Legislative Yuan is on. The DPP hopes for Yu Shyi-kun to continue serving as president of the Legislative Yuan. By contrast, the KMT has aligned behind a joint ticket of its 2020 presidential candidate, Han Kuo-yu, and its former chair, Johnny Chiang. As part of this ticket, Han would become president and Chiang would become vice president...
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.