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 28, 2014
Ministry of Interior says they will consider Wang Dan’s recent case to reenter Taiwan for medical treatment. Wang Dan, a Chinese democracy activist and one of the prominent student leaders of Tiananmen Square, has been living in the US in exile from China but teaching at Taiwanese universities for the last several years. Suffering from dizziness in recent months, Wang said on his Facebook page that he suspects he may have a blood clot or a brain tumor and he wishes to receive treatment through the National Health Insurance program in Taiwan, which he has been paying for the duration of his employment in Taiwan. The Ministry of the Interior said they will review his case.
First Lady Chow Mei-Ching to visit Japan next month. Chow will attend a ceremony at the Tokyo National Museum as honorary leader of a children’s choir group. This comes after a spat last month regarding the exhibition of artifacts from the National Palace Museum at the Tokyo National Museum that ensued when reportedly the word “National” was left off of advertising, making the National Palace Museum indistinguishable from its Beijing counterpart, the Palace Museum. Chow was scheduled to attend the opening ceremony on June 23rd, but the visit was called off.
Taiwan Mainland Affairs Council issues condemnation of Chinese actions at academic conference. At the 20th conference of the European Association of Chinese Studies which was held in the cities of Braga and Coimbra in Portugal from July 22nd to July 26th, Xu Lin, director of the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, popularly known as the “Hanban”, demanded that an ad for the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange be torn out of the program. That the University of Minho that was hosting the conference in Braga complied without consulting the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation led to the foundation lodging a complaint with the Mainland Affairs Council. Reportedly, the European Association of Chinese Studies also condemned the incident publicly.