Brian Hioe 丘琦欣
@brianhioe
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Editor @newbloommag , writes @Diplomat_APAC @itsflaminghydra @popula . Words @washingtonpost @thenation @guardian . Nonresident fellow @UoN_TRH
Taipei, Taiwan
Joined October 2010
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For April Fool's Day, Pizza Hut Taiwan has rolled out a "flavorless" pizza, which is just a giant hole with nothing inside
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The tankie mentality of basically claiming the US is the worst in the world and no other struggle or context matters in comparison is first world narcissism at its best, lol
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Because the crimes that Taiwan has committed against food can never be enough, a ramen shop in Kaohsiung is now offering durian ramen
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Of all social media networks, I really cannot stand LinkedIn because of its focus on "career" and "professionalism"--things I do not care for. So I decided to change my profile photo to pictures of me drunk and passed out in places
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Hahahahahahaha, someone really wants to please China
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Another reminder that for so many American leftists, the rest of the world only exists an abstraction to be dismissed so that they can get back to the more urgent business of continuing to self-flagellate about America
The Russians are preparing to invade Ukraine, the Chinese are preparing to invade Taiwan, all according to the one nation that has invaded, droned, sanctioned, & subverted nations for years. Look, the only threat to international peace comes from warmongering of U.S.
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Only in Taiwan will you have this as an ad for an election campaign rally. Only Taiwan
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Heard a conversation in a restaurant just now which was like: 我知道，我知道，好，我知道，好，好，好，我知道，我知道，知道了，好，好，我知道，好，我知道，我知道，我知道，好，好，好，好，我知道，我知道，好，我知道，我知道，好，謝謝。中秋節快樂
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Taipei 101 has lit up with bilingual messages of welcome for Pelosi
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Have a piece in
@guardian
today responding to the PRC's claims that Taiwan belongs to China since time immemorial, when this is an invented nationalist history
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Plot twist: the piece of paper Hu Jintao was reaching for at the 20th National Congress turns out to be a blank piece of paper
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So you guys remember Zongchai, the cute Shiba Inu spokesdog from the Ministry of Health and Welfare for COVID-19-related messaging, right? Uhhh, while we weren't looking...he...evolved
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Anyway, since the men's badminton victory for Taiwan had a ball land on the line of the court, there's a lot of jokes on the Internet that this should be the national flag of Taiwan
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Following the Abe shooting, it'll probably be important to keep an eye out on how Japanese ultranationalists spin it. Lots of room for danger, whether in terms of regional tensions or domestic Japanese politics
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Pizza Hut Taiwan's latest monstrosity is...a turtle-shaped mochi pizza with cilantro??? What in the...
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"Baby shortfall," lol. Can you imagine thinking of babies, of humans, only in terms of labor capacity. Almost like we only matter as commodified labor, human capital
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So he'll just pretend that Zhu Yi wasn't treated the way she was online, huh?
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I am posting this article because the world needs to see these images of Tsai carrying a bazooka
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While we’re discussing Taiwan’s first domestically manufactured submarine today, let’s not forget to include in our discussion the commemorative liquor produced for the submarine program to date
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In an hour is the start of that deeply cursed Qiao/Code Pink/People's Forum conference. Since my masochism knows no bounds, I will be live-tweeting it with critical commentary...for the next ten hours
Keep an eye on this space! Join me on a journey into the heart of darkness
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The Grand Hotel today, commemorating that there were zero new COVID-19 cases announced in Taiwan today by the Centers for Disease Control. Photo from the Grand Hotel's Facebook.
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DPP Changhua candidate Wu Yin-ning has a campaign billboard in five different languages, touting Taiwan's diversity and likely hoping to appeal to immigrants. Photo from her FB page
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Pizza Hut Taiwan continues its record of crimes against humanity
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There's a kind of western leftist (almost always US) that celebrates acts of resistance to US empire but immediately calls on anyone else resisting threats from Russia, China, or wherever to drop it lest you risk global thermonuclear war, lol.
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I like how by this logic, the numerous Taiwanese restaurants in Beijing indicate that China is a part of Taiwan
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So Chapo Trap House, being a group of white socialist bros, doesn't know a lot about the world outside of the US, hm? Their latest episode dismisses Chinese invasion threats against Taiwan because Taiwan is globally unimportant and I'm like, lol, you call yourself a socialist...
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Lol, the Qing didn't even control the whole of Taiwan, nor did they have any particular interest in it. Anyway, let's reset the world to geographic borders of 19th century premodern empires, folks--wonder what Mongolia will think about that
Why do almost all W. journalists, including those w/ experience, fail 2 mention that TW was in fact incorporated into CN in the 1880s n that both the ROC n PRC regard it as part of CN? Instead, they depict the PRC stance as if it came out of nowhere...
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Taiwanese Indigenous singer-songwriter Panai Kusui singing Glory to Hong Kong at a rally today in front of the legislature
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On Thursday at 9 PM Taipei time,
@lnachman32
and I are hosting a conversation on the
#MilkTeaAlliance
on
@TwitterSpaces
, featuring
@nathanlawkc
,
@chungchingkwong
,
@royngerng
,
@kixes
,
@tatdnow
,
@wenliunyc
and
@thomaschen48
! Please join us!
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Chinese nationalists comment on "keeping the island but not the people" all the time, a vaguely genocidal statement, but hey, you do you and see it as only the US "provoking" China--as though Taiwanese simply don't exist and our perspectives can be disregarded altogether
🚨 The United States is using Taiwan to provoke China. To maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait and avoid turning the island into the Ukraine of East Asia, it is necessary to stop US interference in the region.
To learn more, read our Briefing no. 6:
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There is literally no politician or political party of any significance in Taiwan calling for war against China, lol
China has sanctioned top US weapons corporations Lockheed Martin and Raytheon for selling arms to separatists in Taiwan, who want to wage a war against the central Chinese government
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Taiwan has literally never been controlled by the PRC, it is de facto independent and it was only ever a province of any premodern Chinese empire for seven years. So in other words, he believes it's consistent to oppose Russian annexation but be fine with Chinese annexation, lol
So, and this is a very difficult thing for many people to accept, you cannot --if you observe any consistency in your thinking-- condemn Russian annexation and support unilateral independence of Taiwan.
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According to this Next Apple report, citing Japanese journalist Minemura Kenji reporting for the Yukan Fuji, lip reading analysis shows Hu Jintao being told by Li Zhanshu "Don't look at it, it's been decided" regarding the paper he was grasping for
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I condemn Beijing's support of Pol Pot, UNITA in Angola, the mass murder of Tamil Tigers, its invasion of Vietnam, its repression in HK, Tibet etc. BUT, I'll be damned if I fall victim to the insistence of the imperialist architects of the New Cold War to brand China imperialist
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Writing my article on the election results in Hong Kong yesterday and the thought pops into my head, "Why don't they refer to 'District Council' as 'DisCo' the way they refer to 'Legislative Council' as 'LegCo'?
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Taiwan announced as receiving 750,000 vaccines by Senator Tammy Duckworth at the press conference held by the three visiting US senators
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Lol, did Jacobin invite Vijay Prashad and Noam Chomsky to discuss the Pelosi visit, rather than anyone Taiwanese?
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Remind me why Jacobin always gets this joker to write on Taiwan instead of a Taiwanese person on the left again? No Taiwanese are quoted in the article, but hey, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson and Mitt Romney are, lol
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Is it so hard for him to understand that, much as Puerto Rico deserves the right to self-determination, so does Taiwan?
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I've been watching the transition from where the view was China bungled its response to COVID-19 to the view that China was successful in its response. A lot of it really turns to insularity on the part of western media discourse and the view of China as an Other
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Lol, I am begging you Yanis, please read a book. The PRC has never ruled Taiwan. Do not justify political claims over Taiwan on the basis of premodern history or abstract blood and soil ethno-nationalism
A Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be murderous, inexcusable and very stupid. But, Taiwan to China bears no relationship to, say, what Iraq was to the ... US. Taiwan IS predominantly Chinese and it should be a matter of its predominantly Chinese people to decide their future.
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Don't prattle on about China having a 100% chance of using force against Taiwan in the next 5 years unless you want that to happen. The more people repeat these kinds of things, the more pressure it puts on China to do this, in order to avoid coming off as weak
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People realize that there is no magic "red line" that you can avoid that China will be happy and leave Taiwan alone, right? That's not how this nationalism thing works, lol, the idea that all you need to do is avoid the "red line" is laughable
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I love that Qiao is circulating this, claiming that the Xinjiang police files leak contains traditional characters so it's fake, engineered by Taiwan, whatever.
Uhhh, in red in this tweet, it's all simplified characters. Some real geniuses there. They can't tell the difference
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While I feel it is an incredible moral outrage for Bachelet delaying the release of that report on Xinjiang until mere minutes before her term ended, the truly scary thing is that it shows how much power the CCP has within the UN to exert such pressure
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My mother made a comment to me just now about how the media isn't reliable anymore and I responded, "Mom, I am the media"
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Must be nice thinking that there is only one problem in the world, lol. The world is way way way more complicated than that
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Woman gets vaccinated wearing a dinosaur suit in Taichung
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Regarding the whole "Chinese people will never kill Chinese people" thing that pro-unification KMT types throw around to dismiss the possibility of an invasion, I'm like....uh hey guys, you ever heard of the Chinese Civil War? That's why you're here...
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Well, the president shared my article in a comment on a post. Kinda want to retreat into a shell now...
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Another one of these "I have been here a total of two days, Taiwanese have never thought about the geopolitical threats they have faced for decades, Taiwan is a geopolitical chess piece, it is a free rider, therefore we should abandon it" articles
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My report on the prayer ceremony and solidarity rally for Myanmar in Liberty Plaza today
"Solidarity Rally, Prayer Ceremony for Myanmar in Liberty Plaza Draws 1,000" by
@brianhioe
Link:
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Wrote a takedown of Monthly Review's issue on China, featuring none other than Qiao Collective and tankie luminaries as Mark Tseng-Putterman. What it reflects is that many western leftists have difficulty conceptualizing any capitalist or imperialist powers that are not the US
"The Monthly Review's China Issue Reveals the Narcissistic Inward Gaze, Self-Flagellating Politics of the Western Left" by
@brianhioe
Link:
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Anyway, seeing a lot of the reactions to the Abe shooting just really reiterates the point that, for many in the West, Asian politics is just a abstraction for them to project concerns closer at hand onto
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The same survey: Only 9% of Taiwanese see China as credible. So...
33% respondents in Taiwan view the US as credible, while more than 56% say it is not.
More Taiwan people are waking up to the real intention of the US: using the island as a pawn to contain China's rise.
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Ministry of Health spokesdog Zongchai urging respect children over the Lunar New Year, not to touch them without permission, force them to greet them, to compare them with other kids, etc. Since Lunar New Year is a time of great pressure for many visiting their relatives
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The US really sent their best and brightest this time, huh?
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Regarding Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin, who won gold for men's badminton for Taiwan, they're often compared to bwa-bwei on the Taiwanese Internet--referring to moon block divination--because of, well, their habit of doing this after victory. See the resemblance?
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I am begging you, please speak to an actual, living breathing Taiwanese person, lol
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It's interesting to think through the failure of international solidarity there where they make it into a game of one-upmanship in which they want to claim the top position of victimhood, as a claim to moral superiority
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Former Taiwanese volunteer soldier in Ukraine, Jack Yao, states in comments at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit that if Ukraine falls, Taiwan will be next
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Alright, here's my piece on the shooting. This sums up the confusion about the "Chinese" versus "Taiwanese" identity of the shooter, what the initial reactions were in Taiwan, and the larger context of violence in recent years by pro-unification groups it takes place in
"Confusion About 'Chinese' or 'Taiwanese' Identity of Gunman after Shooting at Taiwanese Church in California" by
@brianhioe
Link:
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Some conflicting reports going around that the gunman for the shooting at the Irvine Taiwanese Presbyterian Church was waishengren or Chinese (and you can see how those unfamiliar with Taiwan's ethnic politics could conflate the two)
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They deleted, but IT'S TOO LATE. THE INTERNET FORGETS NOTHING.
Oh my. This is an actual tweet from the KMT official Twitter account. Already took a screenshot for posterity
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Lai formally confirms he’ll be running with Hsiao as VP candidate in a Facebook post this morning
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Have a piece in
@guardian
on the Pelosi visit, writing on how inflated threat assessments disregarded how Taiwanese themselves were rather calm about the visit, and how this reflects how Taiwanese perspectives were neglected regarding Pelosi's trip
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How to say in a tweet you’ve never been to China/only went to the fancy districts of big cities/failed to notice the migrant worker neighborhood demolished for the sake of development in those cities
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12:20 AM, a mere seven hours or so after Pelosi departed Taiwan--I look on the Apple Daily and all eight front page stories are about celebrity gossip, sex scandals, medical horror stories, or real estate. Yes, Taiwan is still at peace
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Or…China just drops it with the threats. Nobody dies. Things stay the same. Happy ending?
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Zero domestic cases announced for the first time since the start of the outbreak at the CECC's daily press conference
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In the wake of Abe's death, as is also the case with Trump and other right-wing authoritarians, it is unsurprising to note that Taiwanese generally do not know much about Abe's actions domestically in Japan, but instead view him solely along the metric of his support for Taiwan
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Ministry of the Interior announces transnational gay marriages to be permitted, lifting restrictions that required gay partners to both be from countries that legalized gay marriage to be married in Taiwan. Does not apply to cross-strait couples though
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Imagine the insularity of imagining that there is, can, and only ever will be one Big Bad in the world, which happens to be the place you're from
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Taiwanese street food kaiju from Goodzilla 好吉拉, including Pig Blood Cake Godzilla, Stinky Tofu Ghidorah, and one I don't recognize that's an o-ah oyster omelette
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Appreciated the
@LastWeekTonight
with
@iamjohnoliver
speaking ahead of time with
@lnachman32
and I, among others, to get the nuance right for their segment on Taiwan
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Aegis, the restaurant that opened in Taipei earlier this year as a way to provide Hong Kong protesters needing to flee with work permits to stay in Taiwan, has announced that they've opened a second store to provide more individuals with visas
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CtiTV is claiming that young voters spent all night reading news about Wang Leehom, slept until noon, and decided it was too cold to go out, and that's why they didn't go support the KMT in the referendum right now, lol
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TSMC announces it is halting orders to Russia
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In the meantime, at a youth forum by NOWNews today, when asked about policy for LGBTI+ students, Ko Wen-je calls for treating LGBTI individuals as having mental illness. Screenshot from the IG of the Taiwan Equality Campaign, which played a key role in legalizing gay marriage
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Very questionable framing from
@NextShark
, which describes itself as "the leading source for Asian American news" on Taiwanese history here. The article suggests waishengren were the most victimized group in post-war Taiwan yet somehow fails to mention the KMT's mass killings
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Here's my report on the Lai victory. Lai won by a clear lead, but the DPP and KMT performed dead even in the legislature, even if the DPP was ahead in the party vote. This shows that the DPP is still the most widely supported party, though this is narrow and insufficient
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Elon Musk's comments on the possibility of Taiwan-China conflict--with the assumption that Chinese factories could continue manufacturing and sell domestically--are pretty ironic when Taiwanese companies constitute 75% of Tesla’s component supply chain
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Pelosi to meet with former Tiananmen Square student leader Wuerkaixi, formerly kidnapped Hong Kong Causeway Bay bookseller Lan Wing-kee, and formerly kidnapped Taiwanese NGO worker Lee Ming-che at the Jingmei Human Rights Park
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Good to see Chinese protesting against Taiwan’s forced annexation, when it’s more common to see Chinese protesters against pan-Green politicians
"No war of unification with Taiwan! We support Lai Ching-te!"
Chinese supporters of Taiwan's vice president chant slogans ahead of his arrival in New York.
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Ah, yes, it looks like someone forgot to fill out the template here
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Giant Rubber Duck, similar to the one that exploded there a decade ago, appears in the Keelung Harbor—but nobody, including port authorities, seem to know why it’s there
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Lol, who wants to be a victim anyhow, you can only want to have that position for moral superiority when you don't have it that bad. For diaspora tankies, it probably ultimately goes back to a sense of lacking authenticity
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Three centuries ago, the Russian nobility all spoke French. Why not its French past, huh? Lol.
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