Taiwan Railways workers may again strike on June 3rd, over the Dragon Boat Holiday, as a show of force against the Taiwan Railways Administration management’s plans to privatize the railway. As 1,348 of the TRA’s 1,400 train drivers have voted to support calls from the Taiwan Railways Union to strike that day by taking the day off...
The question of who the DPP and KMT intend to field as their mayoral candidates in Taipei and Taoyuan has come under scrutiny in recent days, as the primary season comes to a close before nine-in-one elections later this year...
Five were injured and one was killed in a shooting at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church on Sunday afternoon. The victims were all Taiwanese American, as was the shooter, David Wenwei Chou, age 68, who was a resident of Las Vegas. The shooting took place at a lunch reception for a pastor who had returned to Taiwan to start a congregation there, where 30 to 40 people were reportedly present. The Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church convened at the Geneva Presbyterian Church in Irvine...
Hualien resident Yin Yuan-cheng, a Taiwanese national, and his Chinese wife, Liu Hui, face jail time over posts on Facebook circulating disinformation about COVID-19. The couple run two Facebook groups, the “Diba Base” and the “Diba Central Force”. ...
Former police chief John Lee was named the next Chief Executive of Hong Kong last Sunday, with Lee the victor of an election in which he ran unopposed...
Kao Yuan University proves the latest Taiwanese university accused of sending foreign students to work in factories under the auspices of a work-study program. As a result, the school has been banned from enrolling foreign students...
The KMT has sought to attack the Tsai administration over the issue of rapid tests as of late, taking advantage of public outrage over rapid test shortages. This follows a familiar script, seeing as the KMT has sought to use shortages of various medical supplies used to fight COVID-19 to attack the DPP throughout the course of the pandemic...
Even as daily reported domestic cases have not yet broken 50,000, Taiwan maintains efforts to transition away from COVID-zero. The past three days have seen over 40,000 cases, with 40,263 domestic cases reported today, 44,294 domestic cases reported yesterday, and 46,377 domestic cases reported the day prior...
Images and videos of the lockdown of Shanghai have proved shocking in Taiwan. While less widely reported on in pan-Blue media, stories about new incidents of brutality in the course of the lockdown circulate widely in the Taiwanese media and among the general public...
New measures that will allow migrant workers to obtain permanent residency will take effect from today. This takes place at a time in which Taiwan faces labor shortages, particularly in the electronics manufacturing industry, due to the effects of COVID-19...
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.