A number of local governments have been promoting elementary-school testing in recent years, ostensibly to better understand students’ learning needs and provide reference points for teachers and education policy planning. In practice, the testing system has diverged from this original intent to bec
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) landed in Pyongyang on Monday for his first visit to North Korea in about seven years, and the choreography was immediate. Gun salutes, children offering flowers and a banner reading “unbreakable friendship” set the tone before any talks had even begun. The visit h
The government says that it wants to crack down on drug-impaired driving, and the rhetoric has been strong, strict, swift and severe. Every word makes it sound as though the nation is fully prepared to protect its people. Yet a recent case in Changhua County revealed something else entirely. On Thur
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Just before dawn on Jan. 17, a Chinese military drone crossed for the first time into Taiwanese airspace above a disputed coral reef in the South China Sea. The reconnaissance aircraft lingered over Pratas Island (Xisha Island, 西沙群島) for a few minutes, while Taipei issued warnings to leave over inte
At first glance, Nigeria and France make for an unlikely pair. Nigeria, after all, is the “giant of Africa,” whose vast potential has too often been undermined by weak institutions and poor governance.France, by contrast, is a former imperial power clinging to a military posture that looks increasin
After completing investigations into the US’ major trading partners over the importation of goods produced with forced labor under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, the Office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) on Tuesday last week announced that it had proposed additional tariffs on 60 econo
Yesterday morning delivered a reminder of our shared geological vulnerability. At 7:37am, a massive magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck Mindanao in the Philippines, sending shockwaves through the region and triggering immediate alerts across the Pacific Ring of Fire. Southeast Asia is facing an escalati
As semiconductor manufacturing crosses the 2-nanometer threshold into the era of the angstrom, the global chip race is now about much more than shrinking dimensions. It has become a broader system of competition encompassing transistor architecture, backside power delivery, advanced packaging, manuf
Taiwan is facing a serious demographic crisis, characterized by one of the lowest birthrates in the world and a growing number of older residents. This is leading to a labor shortage, and the government has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to introduce Indian workers into Taiwan to make up
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India’s youth have many reasons to feel wounded. From shrinking returns on college education to the disappearance of good jobs and fading hopes of a middle-class life, they are fighting one battle after another. In the end, though, what broke Gen Z’s dam of patience was an insult from the highest co
The US-Iran ceasefire is entering yet another round of escalation since it came into effect on April 8. This week, there have been further strikes on Iran by the US, and Iranian retaliation against Kuwait and Bahrain, alongside Israeli escalation in Lebanon. Earlier flare-ups over the past two month
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) in San Francisco on Tuesday last week said if she had not met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), she would have been “just a plain” and “even negligible” KMT chairperson, bluntly signaling the role she is playing in her visit to the
In 1935, the German Reich led by the National Socialist Party officially created the Nuremberg Race Laws, a “legal cage”, for German Jews, stripping them of citizenship, criminalizing their personal relationships, barring them from public life, and transforming them into stateless subjects and isola
Nigel P. Daly’s recent article, “Taiwan wants bilingual, artificial intelligence-ready graduates — but tests for yesteryear,” (June 3, page 12) highlighted a challenge at the heart of Taiwan’s education system. We are asking schools to cultivate creative, critical thinkers for an AI-driven global ec
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No one knows whether AI will trigger a white-collar jobpocalypse. The loudest warnings still come from people building and selling the technology, whose predictions often double as hype-mongering or cover for unrelated cost-cutting with investor-friendly language. Think-tank and analyst forecasts ar
At the recent Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pressed the US’ Asian allies to spend 3.5 percent of their GDP on defense, fueling anxiety across the region and beyond. His brow-beating call to arms might well bring about a regional defense build-up on a scale un
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