Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou speaking to international reporters in English yesterday morning in Taipei. Another video after the jump... more ›

We told you recently that Taiwan's upcoming presidential election in 2012 is going to be one to watch. That's because James Soong (宋楚瑜) of the People First Party has now thrown his hat into the ring, and the scales could be tipped in the favour of Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), the current chairperson of the Democratic Progressive Party. If elected, Tsai will be Taiwan's very first female president. more ›

Taiwan's 2012 presidential elections is now looking a whole lot more interesting with the entrance of James Soong (宋楚瑜), founder of the People First Party, into the race. more ›

• Chinese athletes boycott closing ceremony of World Games [Earth Times] "Chinese athletes boycotted the closing ceremony Sunday evening of the 8th World Games in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan. When athletes entered the Main Statium in Kaohsiung, south Taiwan, there was only a Taiwan student holding the Chinese red flag marching behind the girl holding the "China" placard."
• Chinese Steelworkers Fight Privatization Effort [WSJ]"A Hong Kong-based human-rights group said thousands of steel workers in China's northeast staged an at-times violent protest against the planned takeover of their state-run employer and a group of them killed a top executive at the private company that was to acquire it. Several local officials and residents confirmed a protest took place Friday in Tonghua, in Jilin province, but details of the report by the Information Center for Human Rights and Democracy, including the size of the protest and the manager's death, couldn't be confirmed."
• Taiwan’s Ma Takes Party Post, Boosting China Summit Prospects [Bloomberg] "Taiwan’s President Ma Ying-jeou was voted chairman of the ruling Kuomintang party, an appointment that may pave the way for a historic summit with China. Ma, the only candidate for the position, received 94 percent of votes cast yesterday, Chen Shu-rong, a Kuomintang spokeswoman said in Taipei."

If you've ever been curious about the failures of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek, Taiwan is set next month to declassify confidential documents on his many attempts to take back China. Visitors, including us mainlanders, will be allowed to visit Back Tzuhu, a previously restricted section of Chiang's Mausoleum in Taoyuan County, Taiwan. The area was a wartime command center during the 1960s. From 1964 to the early 1970s, Chiang tried repeatedly to launch naval attacks, only to have each of them fail spectacularly. With each failure, Chiang's confidence in retaking the mainland eroded, and by 1972 the project had been abandoned. Source: South China Morning Post more ›

Yuanyuan and Tuantuan, two giant pandas who made the headlines two years ago when Taiwan's government refused to accept them as a gift from mainland China, will now at long last be moving to Taiwan. Since the pandas' names together form the word "tuanyuan" (团圆) or "reunion", the gift was seen as having rather political undertones. With the newly elected KMT ruling the island, the welcoming of these two cuddly bears might be viewed as a symbol for a closer relationship with the mainland. more ›

Way back in 1925, during the heyday of foreign imperialism in Shanghai, discontent was fomenting among the local populace over what were generally considered to be unfair privileges granted to foreigners and Chinese exclusion from the governing Shanghai Municipal Council. The deals the foreign powers had struck up with Manchu officials in the 19th century, suspect from the beginning, had little official legitimacy after the fall of the Qing more than ten years earlier. Tensions reached a boiling point when labor protests at a Japanese factory resulted in an assault and the death of a Chinese employee on May 15th. more ›