Three Chinese asylum seekers were sent back to Malaysia in November, though this news was only reported on earlier this month. The incident proves revealing about the lack of transparency and clear oversight over asylum procedures that occurs as a result of Taiwan’s lack of formal asylum procedures...
The Tsai administration has defended a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) inked between the Taiwanese government and the Indian government about allowing Indians to work as migrant workers in Taiwan. Namely, in past months, as the two governments finalized the signing of the MoU and the finalization of the draft MoU was reported on in Taiwan, there was a wave of backlash against the prospect...
A political controversy about a banned meat additive has become an object of partisan contestation between the KMT and DPP, with the KMT boycotting a report to the legislature by Premier Chen Chien-jen yesterday. The controversy led to back-and-forth before the Lunar New Year between the health authorities of the Food and Drug Administration and the Ministry of Health and Welfare...
A drowning incident involving two individuals on a Chinese speedboat in Kinmen territorial waters could prove a case that ramps up tensions between Taiwan and China in the coming days, if the Chinese government leverages on the incident for nationalist outrage...
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...
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.