The approval of the extradition of Zain Dean to Taiwan by the UK’s top court will probably once again open up a can of worms regarding a host of issues in Taiwan, ranging from race relations to Taiwan’s criminal justice system to the conditions of Taiwan’s jails. One can expect much media furor to follow...
With the passage of the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Bill yesterday night after its third reading, Taiwanese youth activists have reacted angrily to the bill's, seeing as the DPP does not rule out forced land expropriation in the bill. Still others have has also raised concerns that the Forward-Looking Infrastructure Bill could lead to unaccountable spending and an extreme arrogation of power to the Executive Yuan. ...
China may soon be facing a PR nightmare on its hands from the possible death of Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize and an imprisoned political dissident since 2008, from a late stage cancer diagnosis. But the irony of this raising awareness of China's human rights situation is that it comes at a time of a global retreat from human rights discourse...
Recent criticisms of of the newly launched pay.taipei initiative by members of Taiwan’s tech community, including g0v’s Billy Lin, are illustrative of disconnects between Taiwan’s tech industry and government officials who may wish to create a tech-friendly image for Taiwan but may not be willing to take the sometimes simple steps to realize that vision...
The Bank SinoPac scandal is probably illustrative of the continued murkiness behind many of Taiwan’s large financial institutions, in which a small set of individuals with decades long ties to the ROC state wield a disproportionate amount of power and often act to defend one another when caught guilty of wrongdoing...
Strange scenes took place across Taiwan yesterday as part of a nationwide day of action against pension reform, mostly from pan-Blue military veterans. Most visible of these would be the attempt by several hundred opponents of pension reform to storm the Legislative Yuan, something which led to clashes with police and police injuries when they attempted to tear down the razor wire fence surrounding the Legislative Yuan...
While the internal crisis of the KMT has been ongoing for some time, it may be that it is not only the KMT, but also the DPP which is presently in the midst of a political crisis...
It is a strange paradox to observe the recent phenomenon of nationalistic Chinese netizens scoffing western critics of Donald Trump on issues as immigration, minorities, LGBTQ, and the environment as naive members of the “white left”....
Controversy has been provoked by comments from Tainan mayor William Lai stating that his views are for Taiwan to have relations “close to China, while loving Taiwan.” For Lai, previously known as a pro-independence firebrand, these comments are a notable step back from previous statements in which Lai avowed support of Taiwanese independence while traveling in China. Very likely Lai’s statement reflects several things...
With global concern over the spread of “fake news” following prominent discussion about the issue during 2016 American presidential elections, some have also raised the need in Taiwan to combat fake news and prevent the spread of false information. But could this possibly lead to dangers for press freedoms in Taiwan?...
