Taiwan in NorCal



Date of Recording: November 4th, 2024.

Earlier in May and June of 2024, we reported from Taipei on the massive street protests which became known as the Bluebird Movement. These protests were the largest Taiwan had seen in the decade since the 2014 Sunflower Movement.

The protests voiced the public's concern with the new amendments to the law governing the Legislative Yuan's (Taiwan's parliament) power and in particular, new investigative powers including the power to subject public officials to fines or jail time if they refused to attend hearings or provide information when asked to do so by legislators.

Many feared that these new powers would allow private individuals, government officials, corporate executives, military staff and others to be targeted and persecuted by the Kuomingtang (KMT) and their smaller ally, the Taiwan People's Party (TPP) under the auspices of legislative questioning.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) subsequently took a case to Taiwan's Constitutional Court contesting these new legislative powers and in late October, the Court struck down most of the expanded powers sought by the KMT.

In this episode of Perspectives with Neilo, we report from a November 4th gathering of the Taiwanese American Federation of Northern California (TAFNC) where we spoke to a number of the attendees as well as to the special guest Wang Yi-chuan (王義川) of the DPP about the recent political events in Taiwan as well as how the outcome of the US presidential election may affect US-Taiwan relations moving forward.

[Special thanks to Cooper Wong for translation during Director Wang's interview, to Leona Chen for organizing the interviews and everyone who helped make this episode possible.]

Since recording the interviews, Donald Trump has secured a second term as U.S. President and has already begun making announcements on cabinet positions.

In addition, Taiwan news media are reporting that consensus has been reached between political parties on the national budget for 2025, but as many of them also point out, this is unlikely to mark an end of contention between the KMT and DPP moving forward.


Picture shows DPP Policy Chair, Wang Yi-chuan giving his speech at the Taiwanese American Federation of Northern California on November 4th, 2024
Wang Yi-chuan (王義川) gives a speech at the Taiwanese American Federation of Northern California on November 4th, 2024

DIVE DEEPER:

Additional information on the topics covered in this episode:


#Taiwan, #DPP, #KMT, #TPP, #CCP, #JointSword, #PLA, #Incursions