An insider trading scandal faced by Hualien county commissioner Fu Kun-chi would be yet another example of corruption from pan-Blue political actors...
New Bloom editor Brian Hioe interviewed James X. Morris, who is currently crowdfunding to write a book on historical preservation for the Xindian Cemetery on Indiegogo, entitled Grassroots Heritage. Morris is a Ph.D. candidate residing in Taipei and a freelance writer and anthropologist with a background in politics, government, and cross-Taiwan Strait trade...
Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam has come under fire for her administration’s handling of Super Typhoon Mangkhut, particularly with regards to a failure to declare the day off for residents of Hong Kong. Mangkhut, the world’s strongest storm in 2018 to date, battered Hong Kong this weekend, injuring over 100 and causing damage to property and infrastructure in Hong Kong...
Concerns regarding fake news are on the rise in Taiwan, particularly regarding fake news of Chinese origin generated by content farms. Increased attention to the issue of fake news comes after several recent incidents, including an influx of suspicious users to Taiwan’s largest Internet forum and the suicide of a Taiwanese diplomat in Japan...
Chinese spying efforts in Taiwan have been under closer scrutiny in past months, as observed in government investigation of the New Party and Chinese Unification Promotion Party. However, reports by Chinese state-run media in the last week warning against Taiwanese spies in China could be retaliation for the Tsai administration's recent efforts against Chinese spying...
With proposals by Minister of Transport and Communications Wu Hong-mo to extend the Taiwanese High-Speed Rail to Hualien, this has led to outrage from some, with the view that extending the HSR to Hualien will contribute to the despoiling of Hualien’s natural beauty and cultural sites...
China's mass detention of Uighurs in Xinjiang has exploded into western media coverage in the past month, with the plight of Uighurs seeing no less than a front page article in the New York Times. This marks a welcome change from years preceding, in which little international attention went to the construction of a police state in Xinjiang...
Efforts to pursue transitional justice under the Tsai administration have met with scandal over comments made during a meeting by Chang Tien-chin, the deputy chair of the Transitional Justice Commission understood as a proposal to manipulate public opinion to benefit the DPP in upcoming 2018 local elections later this year. The ensuing backlash led to Chang's resignation. It remains to be seen how efforts to pursue transitional justice under the Tsai administration will be affected by the scandal...
News that China applied pressure to cause the cancellation of a series of Taiwan-themed events at the University of Salamanca in October 2017 may not be too surprising in consideration of increasing Chinese pressure on Taiwan globally. Nevertheless, the incident sets a highly negative precedent for Chinese pressure on Taiwan in academic contexts, whether in Europe or in the world...
A recent series of Tweets from the Taiwanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Twitter account would lash out at The Guardian for reporting that Taiwan engages in direct financial payments to Nauru lawmakers. This hardly presents the best face for Taiwanese democracy, given Taiwan's poor record of holding diplomatic allies to account for their violations of human rights, and its complicity with such violations...
