News broke that the Chinese government approved the arrest of Taiwanese independence activist Yang Chih-yuan today, based on reporting by Chinese media. Yang was arrested on charges of secession and is thought to be held in Wenzhou, Zhejiang...
News broke over the weekend that Li Yanhe, the editor-in-chief of Gusa Publishing, had been detained in China. Li is a Chinese national, but is married to a Taiwanese person, and has resided in Taiwan since 2009. It is thought that Li is currently held under conditions resembling house arrest...
The sometimes blurry line between organized crime and electoral politics, particularly in rural parts of Taiwan, can be observed in the recent sentencing of former DPP county councilor Yan Xumao for amphetamine smuggling. In the first instance, Yan was sentenced to life imprisonment, though he can appeal...
Recent comments by China’s ambassador to the Philippines, Huang Xilian, threatened the 150,000 Filipinos living in Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan...
A spat has broken out between Hsu Chiao-hsin, the KMT city councilor from Taipei, and senior members of the party. Hsu, known as something of a political firebrand and for being social media-savvy if often controversial, is one of the KMT’s most prominent younger politicians at age 33–if not the KMT’s most prominent young politician...
Concerns have been raised regarding the use of genetic information for more than 600,000 patients for an Academia Sinica research project. Consequently, this led to criticisms from legislator Huang Kuo-shu in February that this could potentially be a violation of the Human Biobank Management Act. Namely, according to the Human Biobank Management Act, patients must consent to their data being used and be allowed to withdraw use of the data at any given time. Some patients may not have signed off consent on their data being used but had their information included in the database...
The multi-year saga of the Taiwan Railways Administration corporatization continues, with the Taiwan Railways Union threatening a strike on May 1st over debt issues faced by the government body. May 1st is commemorated as International Workers’ Day, or May Day, in Taiwan and many other parts of the world...
FoxConn founder Terry Gou announced his intentions to run for president earlier this week. Gou emphasized that he believed that “Taiwan needs a great CEO” to serve as its leader...
A number of civil society groups, as well as political parties, have sought to call attention to the current procedure by which justices on the Constitutional Court are picked by the president. Namely, this will be an issue in the near future when four justices that started their terms on October 1st, 2015, are set to retire on September 30th...
The KMT announced late last month that its primary process to decide its presidential candidate for 2024 elections would not take place as an open primary, but through a decision by the party’s standing committee...