Panic about the murder of Canadian English teacher Ramgahan Sanjay Ryan has been amplified by sensationalist news reporting from media outlets. In particular, one news outlet, Taiwan News, has seized upon the case to drive up hits, as it is probably the main source of information about the case among expats that cannot read Chinese-language news sources in Taiwan. We might take a look...
Make no mistake: The execution of a 39-year-old man in Kaohsiung last Friday is a political killing. In all probability, the Tsai administration went ahead with the execution as a way to score political points for the DPP in the lead-up to 2018 local elections and in order to counter criticisms that it has been lax on violent crime...
DPP legislators would in the past week make allegations that the Chinese government has begun investigating whether Taiwanese businesses operating in China have made donations to the pan-Green political camp. If found to have done so, the Chinese government reportedly intends to take punitive measures against such companies, forcing them to make statements acknowledging the 1992 Consensus or otherwise acknowledging a political stance that Taiwan is a part of China ...
Tensions seem to be on the rise between North Korea and America again in past weeks. A prominent sign of this would be secretary of state Mike Pompeo canceling his planned visit to Pyongyang, as announced by American president Donald Trump through Twitter...
Criticisms of the Tsai administration’s handling of flooding in southern Taiwan in the past week have been seized upon by members of the pan-Blue camp. Some of this has bordered on fake news and it is unlikely that a KMT administration would have done any differently. All this would point to the KMT’s lack of any concrete policy platform upon which to contest the DPP, with the KMT instead latching onto any criticisms that it can...
With an announcement by Premier William Lai that English will become an official language of Taiwan next year, there have been a number of divided reactions, ranging from skepticism to support for the idea...
The referendum will soon become a highly contested political battleground in Taiwan, with a number of ongoing referendum initiatives likely to qualify for making it onto the ballot in 2018 elections, At this juncture, one can also venture a number of preliminary observations about what the effects of referendum reform in Taiwan have been...
One notes that absent in many discussions of the trade war between America and China to date, particularly in Taiwan, is any sense of how the trade war will affect the global standing of both countries going forward. However, it is probably true to say that America will be less affected than China by the trade war...