Rally Calling for Child Protections Takes Place on Ketagalan Boulevard

Brian Hioe

Taiwan and China Continue to Contest Air Traffic

Brian Hioe

No, the DPP is Not About to Remove Chiang Kai-shek Statues En Masse

Brian Hioe

Tsai Administration Seeks to Reassure on US Support After Aid Package

Brian Hioe

Politics

Freddy Lim’s Departure Pushes NPP Toward Cooperation with the DPP

Brian Hioe
Freddy Lim announcing his withdrawal from the New Power Party over the party’s failure to adopt a clear policy regarding whether to cooperate with the DPP in next year’s presidential and legislative elections seems to have been surprisingly successful as a political strategy. Lim was able to successfully force the NPP into at least publicly claiming that it will endorse Tsai Ing-wen for reelection in 2020 elections next year...
August 2019EnglishPolitics8 min read

The NPP Faces Crisis After Major Controversies, Unexpected Departure of Freddy Lim

Brian Hioe
The NPP saw two major controversies erupt in the past week, not only regarding a conflict of interest scandal regarding legislator Kawlo Iyun Pacidal that led to her being stripped of her position as a legislator, but also questions about the political orientation of the party vis-a-vis the DPP going into 2020 elections. Subsequently, with little warning, NPP legislator and party heavyweight Freddy Lim announced earlier today that he would be withdrawing from the NPP and running in Taipei’s Zhongzheng-Wanhua district as an independent...
August 2019EnglishPolitics22 min read

Han Kuo-yu Confirmed as the KMT’s Presidential Candidate, But Fractures Remain Visible in the Party

Brian Hioe
Han Kuo-yu was confirmed as the KMT’s presidential candidate on Sunday at the party’s National Congress, although an unusual development was the simultaneous announcement that a KMT president would not simultaneously serve as the chair of the party going forward. Indeed, this seems to be a sign of continued fractures within the party...
EnglishJuly 2019Politics6 min read

US Medical Institute Becomes a Political Tool for China to Bully Taiwan

Hsien-Ho Lin
A group of scholars from China and the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation, a Seattle-based US research center, recently published a paper in The Lancet. However, the paper, which is titled, “Mortality, morbidity, and risk factors in China and its provinces, 1990–2017: a systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017”, has serious scientific and ethical problems in order to serve its political purpose: to echo Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” that “Taiwan is part of China”...
EnglishJuly 2019Politics6 min read

View of China as Only a “Competitor” and Not a Threat Overly Optimistic

Milo Hsieh
On the third of July, a group of American scholars and China watchers co-signed and published an op-ed with seven points in the Washington Post, titled “China is not an enemy". But the letter may simply reflect American naïveté; many in Taiwan, for one, would tell a drastically different story, that China is a threat to democracy on an island of 23 million people...
EnglishJuly 2019Politics11 min read