Brian Hioe

Jacobin Features Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad Labeling Taiwan a “Rock”, Again Ignores Taiwanese Voices

Jacobin's latest confused foray into commenting on Taiwan proves to be a video on its YouTube channel, the Jacobin Show, featuring Noam Chomsky and Vijay Prashad. Following on the heels of an article that labeled individuals that brought up the exclusion of Taiwanese voices from a conversation about their future as “warmongers,” rather than get anyone Taiwanese to discuss the Pelosi visit, Jacobin seems to have gone with Chomsky and Prashad...

Can Chinese Nationalists (or their Apologists) Please Shut Up About Zhonghua?

Imagine if after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that a leading Anglophone left academic journal put out an article blaming the invasion on the failure of Ukrainians to embrace Russian culture. Putin justified the invasion by claiming that Ukraine did not have a language, identity, or culture of its own outside of Russian culture and was wholly an invention of the Bolsheviks, so Ukraine’s existence as a polity could justifiably be nullified. The invasion of Ukraine, then, is the fault of Ukrainians for failing to embrace the “Russo-world”...

Jacobin Frames Highlighting Exclusion of Taiwanese Voices in Conversation About Possible Crisis as “Warmongering”

American leftist magazine Jacobin continues to plumb the depths of bad writing on Taiwan that does not bother to consult Taiwanese voices about their own future, with a recent article by Chicago-based writer Branko Marcetic. Instead of anything like, say, speaking to Taiwanese to see what they think of the odds of conflict with China are, what one instead sees is the usual insularity of western leftists who are more concerned with projecting the specter of American empire onto the non-western world to self-flagellate about themselves rather than finding pragmatic solutions to avoid conflict...

Wage Hike for Migrant Workers Criticized for Limited Scope

Migrant workers and migrant worker advocates criticized a recent wage hike that would increase the minimum monthly wage for live-in migrant workers, who primarily work in homes taking care of the elderly, from 17,000 NT to 20,000 NT. Namely, though the wage hike increases the minimum monthly wage for live-in migrant workers by 17%, the wage hike is still 5,250 NT below the minimum wage in Taiwan, which is 25,250 NT...
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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。