Indigenous community members protested last month outside of the Executive Yuan, marking the one-year anniversary of deadly flooding in Matai’an, also known as Guangfu Township. The deadly flooding occurred after Typhoon Ragasa in September 2025...
The KMT has signaled that it intends to press ahead with efforts to institutionalize caning as a punishment for severe crimes. Such crimes would include sexual assault, child abuse, driving under the influence of drugs, and serious cases of fraud...
After much political contention about the budget earlier this year–including Taiwan’s defense spending–the KMT eventually relented and passed the national budget after over 200 days of stalling at the end of last month. Though the KMT had originally proposed cutting or freezing drone spending–in fact, suggesting that it might cut or freeze all budget that would have been allocated to drones, this did not come to pass...
A recent article in the New York Times ranked Taipei lowest out of the 72 cities that it assessed in terms of climate preparedness. In the wake of the article, the two Taipei mayoral candidates–Puma Shen of the DPP and Chiang Wan-an of the KMT–have traded barbs on what it would take to make Taipei more prepared. Chiang largely attempted to play up the accomplishments of his mayoral administration to date, while Shen has called for proactive measures...
A number of recent cases touch on questions of corruption ahead of the upcoming local elections. In particular, issues of corruption remain rife at the local level, and it is probable that there will be vote buying in the election–as occurs with any Taiwanese election...
“Will Taiwan Just Give Up?” by Simon Shuster in The Atlantic, is the latest article in the heady genre of articles by white men who visit Taiwan for a few days and decide that they have the final verdict on Taiwan’s fate. All the more hilarious that the article is riddled with factual errors, has large gaps in logic, and renders judgments based on vibes-based thinking more than anything else...
Taipei mayor Chiang Wan-an has been criticized over a scandal involving his son. Specifically, his eldest son was found to have been awarded a subsidy for a student exchange program with the US. This raised questions, however, about privilege and nepotism, seeing as not only is Chiang’s son the child of the mayor of Taipei, but also an American citizen...
An aide of pan-Blue legislator May Chin has disappeared while under investigation for corruption charges. Specifically, Chin’s legislative aide, Chang Chun-chieh, was found to have disappeared after authorities detected a low-battery alert on his monitoring bracelet. Chin is an independent but caucuses with the KMT and is generally understood to be a pan-Blue politician...
Issues regarding local corruption are again in the news, with a number of pan-Blue Taitung city councilors questioned about the use of public funds to build a resort...
