China may have succeeded in making Taiwan look petty in a recent row about aviation flight routes. Namely, Taiwan refused to approve flights from Chinese airlines China Eastern Airlines and Xiamen Air in retaliation for China’s unilateral declaration of the M503 flight route...
With recent talks between the Vatican and China regarding the appointment of bishops in China, a new round of speculation that the Vatican will break relations with Taiwan in favor of normalizing relations with China has ensued. The Vatican currently recognizes Taiwan due to restrictions in China on the Catholic Church...
Comments by Wang Ping-Chung of the New Party in an op-ed submitted by Wang to a Chinese state-run media outlet, the Global Times, have provoked outrage, due to Wang stating outright in the op-ed that “China cannot wait for unification". Wang, a prominent figure of the New Party, is currently under scrutiny due to charges that he operated a news outlet for China aimed at pro-unification views in Taiwan, with the aim of eventually developing an espionage network for China...
With reports that Chinese regulators are moving to crack down on multinational companies who display “Taiwan” as a separate country from China on their websites, this is nothing particularly new, the labelling of Taiwan by multinational companies having long been a site of identity contestation...
Recent moves by China suggest that China is stepping up military action aimed at intimidating Taiwan. This includes frequent incidents in which Chinese fighter planes have entered into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, the unilateral declaration by China of the M503 civilian flight route which would pass along the center of the Taiwan Straits, and sailing China’s sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, through the Taiwan Straits...
A bizarre idea proposed by China as of late has been that of building floating nuclear reactors around South China Seas islands which it is currently disputing territorially with Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other regional powers...
The irony, not to mention hypocrisy, of Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-Wen acknowledging Juan Orlando Hernandez as president of Honduras is deep. Namely, Honduras is presently in the midst of a voter fraud scandal, with Hernandez accused of having won the election through fraud, much as how the past KMT once controlled Taiwan through stolen elections. This would be Hernandez’s second term as president and under Hernandez's rule, the Honduran police is accused of killing political dissidents, and allowing organize crime to freely carry out street killings, leading Honduras to have one of the world's highest murder rates...
With the sentencing of Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-che to five years in Chinese prisons for charges of seeking to "subvert" the Chinese government and encourage multiparty democracy, few are surprised. But what now for efforts to secure Lee's release? And will the effects on Taiwan be?...
Donald Trump's recently concluded Asia trip was the site of much bizarre spectacle and pageantry, with Asia Pacific leaders going out of their way to tickle Trump’s ego. This illustrates that Asia Pacific leaders hope to keep Trump pacified through flattery, even when they could otherwise benefit from an American loss of face on the world stage...
A new trend can be discerned in recent news coverage of Taiwan by pro-China media and pro-China commentators that act as the unofficial spokespersons of the Chinese state. This would be to claim in some way that the rising tide of pro-independence views in Taiwan and the growing strength of independent Taiwanese identity has reversed itself, pointing to exciting new figures taking the political scene by storm who are staunchly unification...
