In the lead-up to Taipei mayoral elections, accusations of authoritarianism against Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je are notably on the rise. This has occurred with regards to several issues...
Anger has broken out against Taiwanese actress Vivian Sung after she apologized on her Weibo account for previous comments during an interview several years ago in which she stated that Taiwan was her favorite country, later unearthed by Chinese netizens. Such comments were outraging to Chinese netizens, seeing as they implied that Sung viewed Taiwan as a country. It remains to be seen whether Sung’s later apology will placate angry Chinese netizens, but in the meantime, this apology has angered Taiwanese netizens...
Going into 2018 local elections, what has become increasingly clear is that the KMT hopes to appeal to young people. The Tsai administration and DPP rode into power in 2016 presidential and legislative elections with the support of young people in the two years following the Sunflower Movement and the KMT is hoping to replicate this. This has not been very successful to date...
Leaked information revealing that Google planned to launch a censored version of its search engine has angered many, this project having been termed "Project Dragonfly" within the company. Namely, many accuse Google of having compromised its ideals in allowing for Chinese censorship...
Outrage over vaccines distributed by Changchun Changsheng Bio-technology Ltd. has broken out in China in the past month. It was announced on July 15th that state regulators had discovered that Changchun Changsheng had falsified production data for a human rabies vaccine. Several days later, it was announced that diphtheria, tetanus, and whooping cough vaccines distributed by Changchun Changsheng in 2017 had been substandard...
Once again, it seems that an unusual, outsider political candidate is shaking up mayoral elections in Taiwan. Tainan mayoral candidate Mark Lin’s meteoric rise from obscurity to fame proves revealing about some of the dynamics of Taiwanese politics at present...
The recent indictment of former president Ma Ying-Jeou on charges tied to the KMT’s illegal party assets and KMT-affiliated organizations would have been more or less an inevitable event, if the DPP is serious about its ongoing probe into illegal party assets of the KMT. However, is this a sign that the KMT party assets probe is expanding?...
Although anticipated for some time, a cabinet reshuffle announced last week by the Tsai administration is likely aimed at putting on a good face ahead of 2018 local elections. The reshuffle gives some sense as to what issues the Tsai administration has its eyes on going into 2018 local elections...
Two recent incidents prove examples of murky KMT politics at the local level, with KMT politicians in both urban and rural areas implicated in scandals regarding real estate. This can be observed both with a scandal regarding a dorm complex owned by KMT mayoral candidate Hou You-yi and the sentencing of former Yunlin County commissioner Chang Jung-wei by the Supreme Court...
