Tag: Taipei (Taiwan)

Lam Wing-Kee, Hong Kong Bookseller Who Defied Authorities, Dies at 70

Media Library

Lam Wing-kee, a bookseller in Hong Kong whose abduction and imprisonment by Chinese authorities, forced confession to selling forbidden books and subsequent public stand against his detention made him an international cause célèbre, died on July 2 in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. He was 70. Mr. Lam’s death in a hospital, from lung cancer, was announced by the ministry of culture in Taiwan, where Mr. Lam had been living in exile since 2019. For two decades, Mr. Lam’s celebrated Hong Kong storefront, Causeway Bay Bookstore, specialized in titles that…

A.I. Boom Ignites Asian Chip Companies

Media Library

At Taiwan’s biggest computing show this month, Jensen Huang, the chief executive of Nvidia, was mobbed as if he were a rock star, trailed by a crowd from booth to booth as he signed autographs and posed for selfies. At the stand of SK Hynix, one of his most important South Korean suppliers, Mr. Huang picked up a marker and left a message. Atop a reflective wafer of memory — a component of Nvidia’s A.I. supercomputers now in short supply — he wrote: “Please make more :).” It was only…

Taiwan Is Building a Satellite Network Without Elon Musk

Media Library

In Taiwan, the government is racing to do what no country or even company has been able to: build an alternative to Starlink, the satellite internet service operated by Elon Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX. Starlink has allowed militaries, power plants and medical workers to maintain crucial online connections when primary infrastructure has failed in emergencies, such as an earthquake in Tonga and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Officials in Taiwan face constant reminders that its communication infrastructure must be able to withstand a crisis. The island democracy sits 80 miles from…

Émigrés Are Creating an Alternative China, One Bookstore at a Time

Media Library

On a rainy Saturday afternoon in central Tokyo, 50 or so Chinese people packed into a gray, nondescript office that doubles as a bookstore. They came for a seminar about Qiu Jin, a Chinese feminist poet and revolutionary who was beheaded more than a century ago for conspiring to overthrow the Qing dynasty. Like them, Ms. Qiu had lived as an immigrant in Japan. The lecture’s title, “Rebuilding China in Tokyo,” said as much about the aspirations of the people in the room as it did about Ms. Qiu’s life.…

Taiwan’s Democracy Draws Envy and Tears for Visiting Chinese

Media Library

At the Taipei train station, a Chinese human rights activist named Cuicui watched with envy as six young Taiwanese politicians campaigned for the city’s legislative seats. A decade ago, they had been involved in parallel democratic protest movements — she in China, and the politicians on the opposite side of the Taiwan Strait. “We came of age as activists around the same time. Now they’re running as legislators while my peers and I are in exile,” said Cuicui, who fled China for Southeast Asia last year over security concerns. Cuicui…

China Failed to Sway Taiwan’s Election. What Happens Now?

Media Library

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has tied his country’s great power status to a singular promise: unifying the motherland with Taiwan, which the Chinese Communist Party sees as sacred, lost territory. A few weeks ago, Mr. Xi called this a “historical inevitability.” But Taiwan’s election on Saturday, handing the presidency to a party that promotes the island’s separate identity for the third time in a row, confirmed that this boisterous democracy has moved even further away from China and its dream of unification. After a campaign of festival-like rallies, where huge…

Taiwan Goes to the Polls

Media Library

Tomorrow is Election Day in Taiwan, where the selection of a new president will shape the island’s relationship with China — and, by extension, shape international affairs. Today’s newsletter offers a guide. We know that many readers have paid little if any attention to the campaign, but it’s been fascinating and has implications for the competition over global influence between the U.S. and China. Background The fate of Taiwan is one of the big unknowns of the 2020s. It is now a thriving democracy of around 23 million people, with…

Taiwan Election: Why It Matters, and What It Could Mean for U.S. and China

Media Library

Taiwan will choose a new president on Saturday, bringing new leadership to volatile relations with an increasingly belligerent Beijing. The outcome could raise or lower the risks of a crisis, giving China a potential transition point to revive engagement, or to increase the military threats that could ultimately draw the United States into a war. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has asserted Beijing’s claim over the self-governed island of 23 million people by sending warplanes and ships to the skies and waters around Taiwan almost daily. Washington, while maintaining “strategic ambiguity”…

Taiwan Raised an Alarm About a Chinese Satellite. Chaos Ensued.

Media Library

Taiwan’s defense ministry issued an urgent alert Tuesday about a Chinese satellite launched on a rocket flying over the island, an alarming message that interrupted the final days of campaigning before a major election and spurred accusations of a political ploy. The alert was sent to mobile phones across the island of 23 million people, where presidential and legislative assembly elections will be held Saturday. In English, the initial alert cautioned there was a missile flyover — an error quickly corrected by Taiwanese officials. “It was a satellite, not a…