Tensions seem to be on the rise between North Korea and America again in past weeks. A prominent sign of this would be secretary of state Mike Pompeo canceling his planned visit to Pyongyang, as announced by American president Donald Trump through Twitter...
Criticisms of the Tsai administration’s handling of flooding in southern Taiwan in the past week have been seized upon by members of the pan-Blue camp. Some of this has bordered on fake news and it is unlikely that a KMT administration would have done any differently. All this would point to the KMT’s lack of any concrete policy platform upon which to contest the DPP, with the KMT instead latching onto any criticisms that it can...
With an announcement by Premier William Lai that English will become an official language of Taiwan next year, there have been a number of divided reactions, ranging from skepticism to support for the idea...
The referendum will soon become a highly contested political battleground in Taiwan, with a number of ongoing referendum initiatives likely to qualify for making it onto the ballot in 2018 elections, At this juncture, one can also venture a number of preliminary observations about what the effects of referendum reform in Taiwan have been...
One notes that absent in many discussions of the trade war between America and China to date, particularly in Taiwan, is any sense of how the trade war will affect the global standing of both countries going forward. However, it is probably true to say that America will be less affected than China by the trade war...
It would be an unusual development in Hsinchu county politics that seven candidates of the Greens-Trees Alliance would meet with Minkuotang founder and chair Hsu Hsin-ying in the past week to hold talks...
Controversy has broken out in western academia after feminist academic Avital Ronell was accused of sexual harassment, particularly after highly reflexive defenses of Ronell from fellow high-profile academics on the political Left in the form of an open letter, including Judith Butler and Slavoj Zizek. This bears a sharp parallel to incidents which have happened in leftist Taiwanese academia in the past two years and this may be worth reflecting on...
Taiwan continues to prove an unfriendly place to refugees, with the deportation of Ricardo "Ardot" Parojinog back to the Philippines late last month. Parojinog was suspected of drug trafficking in the Philippines and it is possible that he may be killed after he returns, given current Filipino president Rodrigo Duterte's campaign of state-sanctioned violence and extrajudicial executions against drug dealers and users...
In past years in Taipei, many coffee shops and cafes have sprouted up run by young people, sometimes moving into formerly unused spaces in order to open them. What are the challenges of running such a cafe? We might take an inside look...
The Taipei mayoral election continues to be a political minefield for independents, with clashes in the Third Force regarding the New Power Party’s stance on current mayor Ko Wen-Je...
