Daily Bloom, 7.19.14 and 7.20.14, Weekend Edition

Welcome to the Daily Bloom! The Daily Bloom will be a daily shortform blog with updates on the day’s political going-ons. If something particularly exciting happening in Taiwan, we will be providing live updates on our Facebook page and Twitter account. At the end of the day, we will compile the live updates to provide a chronological timeline of the day’s events. If not, we will simply report on what happened that day, or what might be of note that happened. If you have news tips about what would be interesting to cover, send to [email protected]!

July 19 and 20, 2014

Controversy over DPP independence clause continues. On Saturday, DPP Chairwoman Tsai Ing-Wen declared support for keeping the clause. However, in a move seen by some as an evasion, yesterday, she declared that discussion of the clause would have to be postponed until the next meeting at the party annual congress. With inter-party factionalism continuing in the DPP despite the banning of factions in 2006, some have seen the party congress as occasion for Tsai’s consolidation of the clique around. Tsai is, of course, frontrunner for a possible DPP presidential candidate in the near future.

Number of Chinese tourists to Taiwan expected to exceed one million this year. As according to the Taipei Tourist Bureau, over 500,000 Chinese tourists visited in the first half of this year, twice as last year, the amount could exceed one million. Indeed, on Friday, the director of the Chinese Tourism Bureau announced that residents of 10 more cities would be added to the previous list of 26, who residents are allowed to visit Taiwan independently. Independent travellers to Taiwan who do not come to Taiwan as part of tour groups will still have their daily quota set at 4,000, however, whereas 5,000 continues to be the number of those who come part of tour groups.

Hundreds of Falun Gong members march in Taipei to remember persecution. Counts range from about 500 to over a thousand, the group marched from Taipei 101 to the Presidential Residence this past Sunday. The march marked the 15th anniversary the date in which the CCP began targeting the Falun Gong, with imprisonment, torture, and the alleged harvesting of organs from live Falun Gong members. Spokesmen called on Taiwanese politicians to pay more attention to their plight.

First Lady Chow Mei-ching will not be attending opening ceremony of the National Palace Museum’s exhibition at the Kyushu Museum in Japan. Controversy previously erupted over advertisement for the National Palace Museum’s exhibition in the Tokyo National Museum which referred to the National Palace Museum as merely the “Palace Museum,” rendering it indistinguishable from its mainland Chinese counterpart. The museum apologized, but Chow did not attend the opening ceremony of the exhibition’s opening as a result.