Brian Hioe

Mental Health Used for Political Attacks in Kaohsiung Race, Rather Than Discussed as a Significant Issue

Brian Hioe
Recent attacks on the DPP mayor of Kaohsiung, Chen Chi-mai, from the KMT’s Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Ko Chih-en have hinged around the city’s suicide rate. Ko has pointed to the fact that eight bodies of Kaohsiung residents were found in Kaohsiung’s river in 37 days as a sign of Chen’s poor performance as mayor, insofar as it has affected the mental health of Kaohsiung residents. Ko has otherwise pointed to that there were 4,700 suicides in Kaohsiung in the past ten years, though Kaohsiung’s Health Bureau also responded that suicides were highest in 2019, during Han Kuo-yu’s brief tenure as mayor...
2022 ElectionsEnglishOctober 2022Politics5 min read

Warnings of Chinese Disinformation Behind Reports of Secret Thai Trip by National Security Bureau Head

Brian Hioe
Unverified reports claiming a sightseeing visit to Thailand by National Security Bureau director-general Chen Ming-tong at the public expense began to appear earlier this month, following screenshots posted by a Twitter account with the username @andreny45652235. The Twitter account only had six posts before being taken down, which raised questions as to the authenticity of the account, but the photo of Chen it posted seemed to be taken from Thai customs. It is unclear as to whether Chen traveled to Thailand recently, whether these were older screenshots, or whether they could have been photoshopped...
EnglishPoliticsSeptember 20225 min read

Formosa Plastics Likely to Resist Legal Ruling Against Sunshine Project

Brian Hioe
A Louisiana judge struck down air permits for Taiwan-owned Formosa Plastics’ 9 billion USD “Sunshine Project” earlier this month. The Sunshine Project would have occupied 2,500 acres of land, consisting of fourteen facilities, and would have become the world’s largest production facility for plastics and materials used for the production of plastics...
EnglishEnvironmentalSeptember 2022Social Movements7 min read
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Brian Hioe

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.

丘琦欣，創建破土的編輯之一，專於撰寫社會運動和政治的自由作家偶而亦從事翻譯工作。他自哥倫比亞大學畢業，是亞洲語言及文化科系的碩士，同時擁有紐約大學的歷史，東亞研究及英文文學三項學士學位。