China announced that two Taiwanese companies, the Far Eastern Group and Asia Cement, would be fined a combined amount close to 14 million USD earlier this week. The groups were fined for a number of violations, ranging from labor issues, environmental violations, machine and fire safety, land usage, and taxes...
A new resolution passed by the KMT’s Central Standing Committee earlier this month provides an amnesty period, allowing for members that left or were kicked out of the KMT to rejoin before February 17th. This move is part of an initiative by recently elected chair Eric Chu to open the door for old members that have since left the party...
Attacks from the pan-Blue camp on Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung, who also heads the Central Epidemic Command Center that coordinates Taiwan’s fight against COVID-19, have become particularly intense in the last few weeks. Criticisms focus on a video of Chen Shih-chung singing karaoke without his mask on, which the KMT alleges to have been a recent video. It is unclear how the video leaked online...
The disappearance of Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai, who was ranked #1 internationally by the World Tennis Organization, has made international headlines in the past weeks. Fellow international tennis players ranging from Naomi Osaka to Chris Evert have expressed concern about Peng’s whereabouts, some stressing long years of acquaintanceship with Peng on the tennis court...
Police in New Taipei conducted raids on sixteen establishments in recent days, with over 1,000 police officers deployed as part of deployments. This takes place the same month that entertainment establishments in the “Eight Industries” have been allowed to reopen...
Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández left Taiwan on Monday after a three-day diplomatic visit. The trip was to commemorate 80 years of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Honduras, with Hernández set to leave office in January...
A virtual meeting on Monday between US president Joe Biden and Chinese president Xi Jinping did not lead to any shift in policy on both sides, with both sides instead primarily reiterating their positions...
US president Joe Biden met with Chinese president Xi Jinping today in a virtual meeting. This was one of the most high-profile meetings between the leaders of the world’s two superpowers since Biden took office, with Xi having not left China in around two years. As a result, Xi was not in attendance at the COP26 summit on global carbon emissions, something that was criticized by Biden. The meeting took place on what was Tuesday morning in China and Monday evening in the US...
A three-day diplomatic visit by a delegation of six Republican members of Congress to Taiwan took place last week. The delegation arrived on November 9th and stayed until November 11th. This consisted of four Senators and two members of the House of Representatives, these being Senators John Cornyn, Mike Crapo, Mike Lee, and Tommy Tuberville, as well as Representatives Tony Gonzales and Jake Ellzey...
President Tsai Ing-wen stated that Taiwan was committed to achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 in comments made in the same timeframe of the 26th U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties, more commonly referred to as COP26, in Glasgow earlier this week. The statement by Tsai proves interesting, in that global climate change is rarely the political framework for discussing environmental issues in Taiwan...
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.
