The central bank has launched a redesign of the New Taiwan dollar banknotes, prompting questions from Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — “Are we not promoting digital payments? Why spend NT$5 billion on a redesign?” Many assume that cash will disappear in the digital age, but they forget
At the Golden Bell Awards last month, Vietnamese actor Lien Binh Phat took home the Best Leading Actor in a Television Series award for his role in the multilingual medical drama The Outlaw Doctor (化外之醫) — the first Vietnamese in the award’s history to do so. A paradigm shift in Taiwan’s cultural st
President William Lai (賴清德) last week attended a dinner in Taipei with representatives from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). During the event, he expressed “relief” about the release of Israeli hostages and said that Taiwan had “provided assistance to the Israeli people through
After a meeting between US President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and before Trump’s talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the US president said: “Taiwan is Taiwan.” The statement came as Takaichi declared a new golden age in US-Japan relations, affirming Tokyo’s
EDITORIAL CARTOON
It is fair to say that Tokyo has some of the world’s hippest neighborhoods, but I was not the only one to raise an eyebrow when Time Out magazine declared Jimbocho to be not just the coolest in the Japanese capital, but in the entire world.Jimbocho? Really? The place with the bookstores and ski shop
You cannot do whatever it takes if you are not big enough to make it stick. In that sense, the Philippines is finding out it is no Mario Draghi, the former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank president.Turn the clock back to 2022, when the peso was sliding amid epic dollar strength and
One of the tightest elections in Dutch history produced an outcome so close that first steps in negotiating a new coalition government have yet to begin. However, as the forward march of the far right across Europe dominates headlines, sapping the confidence of mainstream parties, an uplifting takea
The nation’s first case of African swine fever (ASF) is not only a major crisis for the pork industry, but has also put the Taichung City Government under the spotlight, revealing sloppiness and incompetence in handling the crisis.The central government on Oct. 22 confirmed Taiwan’s first case of AS
Donald Trump’s return to the White House has offered Taiwan a paradoxical mix of reassurance and risk. Trump’s visceral hostility toward China could reinforce deterrence in the Taiwan Strait. Yet his disdain for alliances and penchant for transactional bargaining threaten to erode what Taiwan needs
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崐萁) organized a meeting at the Dahua Activity Center in Hualien County’s Guangfu Township (光復) to discuss post-disaster reconstruction efforts following the flood caused by the overflowing of a barrier lake in the Mataian River (馬太鞍溪).The meet
In his op-ed published in the Taipei Times on Thursday last week (“Koo must take a stand on defense,” Oct. 30, page 8), Formosa Republican Association chairman and Taiwan United Nations Alliance director Tommy Lin (林逸民) highlighted the crisis of silence within the Ministry of National Defense. When
EDITORIAL CARTOON
Hong Kong is quickly becoming a college town. The number of non-local students, mostly from China, has nearly doubled since 2021, with the surge primarily driven by a sharp increase in postgraduate studies. The young population inflow has given a boost to a gloomy economy that has been suffering fro
When it comes to the sheer number of generative artificial intelligence (AI) users in China, the question should not be how many there are, but how they are using it.A new report from the China Internet Network Information Center indicates the nation had some 515 million users as of June, up by 266
The US has backed down in its tariff war with China. Thanks to US President Donald Trump’s egotistical diplomacy, rare earths can again flow one way, soybeans the other, and less of the chemicals used to make fentanyl in between. No matter that the war was Trump’s own idea and seems to have been a s
The attention of Taiwanese pundits and politicians last week was laser-focused on the meeting between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Thursday in South Korea. The question on everyone’s lips was whether Xi would bring up the issue of Taiwan, and whether Trump woul
Yesterday, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), once the dominant political party in Taiwan and the historic bearer of Chinese republicanism, officially crowned Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) as its chairwoman. A former advocate for Taiwanese independence turned Beijing-leaning firebrand, Cheng represents the K
With regard to the sustainability of Taiwan’s National Health Insurance (NHI) system, the more funding it gets, the smoother it operates — but the question lies in where that funding should come from. Managing NHI finances is similar to being the chief executive officer of a corporation — it require
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