National Museum of Taiwan History's "Taiwan Overseas" database gives instant access to documents on Taiwan provided by institutions from all over the world. taiwanoverseas.nmth.gov.tw/en

The people don't know that their Bluesky activity exists in their PDS. Adoption could be increased with some user education. Make a campaign and partner with the influential accounts to help distribute the information. @jay.bsky.team @pfrazee.com.

A thread of articles documenting China 🤝 Venezuela ties: "Chinese telecoms giant ZTE is helping Venezuela build a system that monitors citizen behavior through a new identification card. The "fatherland card," already used by the government to track voting, worries many in Venezuela and beyond."

CCP's purpose in the formula "the US capturing Maduro is the same thing as China capturing Taiwan" is cognitive warfare—one imbibed to excess by gullible experts worldwide—that there is moral equivalency between the US and China otoh, and an autocratic regime and Taiwan's legitimate government otoh.

"Facing 🇨🇳's alarming military ambitions, Taiwan has no time to wait and certainly no time to consume ourselves with internal strife. We may hold different views on many issues, but without strong and resilient natl defense, there will be no country, nor will there be space allowed for us to debate."

"The correct move with the PRC is to ignore the noises it makes and avoid repeating them — they are propaganda designed to influence commentary and signal its shills and speakers on what they should be saying."

After the countdown, the Times Square Ball will be lit up in honor of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

It’s all anyone here can talk about. All the kids are all “six seven! six seven!” and all the grownups are all “the Communist Party of China’s steadfast implementation of the central Party leadership’s eight-point decision on improving conduct!” It’s starting to wear me down, tbh.

"In clarifying what geography has long dictated, Takaichi made explicit what Beijing hoped to keep ambiguous: Japan cannot remain a bystander in a Taiwan contingency." www.taipeitimes.com/News/editori...

Just watched the new Knives Out and I think it's really important you know that the scene in the Seminary's Gym is filmed in the same place Rick Astley filmed the music video for Never Gonna Give You Up. I saw the window tracery and immediately made my friends pause the film so I could tell them.

Hot take: Derrida is more important than most famous computer scientists for understanding AI. Here’s why. 🧵👇

"Users will wonder: Will the app still be a free venue for protest against the actions of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement? For anger about the war in Gaza? For discussion of the Epstein files?" www.taipeitimes.com/News/editori...

Just booked my ticket to #ATmosphereConf, proudly attending on behalf of @skysquareapp.bsky.social which, all things going according to plan, we will launch this spring. Anybody else coming please connect, looking forward to meeting folks and experiencing the community in person. 🐵☁️🟪

"Graber describes herself as a “pragmatic idealist.” Pure idealists, she said, pursue visions that can’t work in the real world. Pure pragmatists never produce meaningful change. The key is holding both: a vision of how things could be, and the practical steps to get there."

The US has deployed Typhon missile systems to Japan’s Yamaguchi Prefecture and Zambales province in the Philippines during their joint military exercises, and installed NMESIS anti-ship systems in Japan’s Okinawa, Miyako, Ishigaki, and Batan in the Philippines. www.taipeitimes.com/News/front/a...

In Taipei, Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Hsiao Kuang-wei (蕭光偉) called on Chinese to abide by international norms of etiquette to avoid being made a laughingstock of the global community. www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/...

I'm being facetious, but really only a little laorencha.substack.com/p/does-anyon...

Almost a daily occurrence nowadays: "This person doesn't code... But here they are, showing you a working prototype on their laptop that does... pretty much exactly what the vendor pitched. Sure, it's got some rough edges, but it works. And it didn’t cost six figures. Just two hours of their time."

Le gouvernement taïwanais continue ses efforts de vaccination contre le Covid-19 : après les plus de 50 ans et autres personnes à risque, tous les habitants âgés de plus de 6 mois pourront se faire vacciner gratuitement du 1er janvier au 28 février.

"the juxtaposition is always of China to the West. What is non-Western is idealized and extolled as superior. This is, in a word, Orientalism... never takes China as a society... or that Chinese people are as human... they are merely shadow puppets through which to construct a grandiose fantasy..."

My appreciation for the film Dr. Strangelove has grown over the years. Its subtitle, I now feel, has a lasting brilliance that never loses its relevance — "How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb."

"However, we found that when DeepSeek-R1 receives prompts containing topics the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) likely considers politically sensitive, the likelihood of it producing code with severe security vulnerabilities increases by up to 50%."

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security. Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations. Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people. —Harry Truman, 1952

Also in #Europe — the current vice president of #Taiwan, Bi-khim Hsiao, who delivered the 1st-ever speech by a senior member of the Taiwanese government in the European Parliament. "We don't just want to survive. We want democracies to thrive," she said in #Brussels. www.ipac.global/news/taiwans...

Look y'all, there are some super big hints in this article: "World War II ended only when... the United States dropped nuclear weapons on Japan." "Chinese failure in a conflict over Taiwan could also threaten Xi or his successor’s hold on power and undermine the legitimacy of the CCP." ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We launched the China Index (中文版) with a press briefing on how Beijing shapes narratives & influence in Taiwan. A major challenge is how broad and varied these efforts are, often reaching those left out of the social safety net — a reminder how social gaps can turn into leverage points.

Very good piece here: "Not only are the people effectively owned by the CCP, their identities, cultures, religions, languages and ethnicities are defined, developed and controlled by the CCP to “foster a strong sense of community for the Chinese nation,” according to the CCP constitution."

"China surely has high expectations that the KMT would return to power under Cheng’s leadership and contribute to “peaceful unification.” That would save China from needing to use force... as Trump has said that Beijing would not take military action against Taiwan during his presidency..."

“The United States insists on the full and equal participation of all APEC member economies — including Taiwan — consistent with APEC’s guidelines, rules and established practice, as affirmed by China in its offer to host in 2026,” the unnamed spokesperson said..."

"National Chengchi University’s Election Center Taiwanese identity poll shows that the “Taiwanese-only” identity accounts for over 60 percent of the population... “Taiwanese-Chinese” identity is in decline, from 38.2 percent in 2018, to just 30.5 percent now."

The second of my twice-weekly columns looks at the alleged "unwillingness to fight" of Taiwanese, driven by the recent SCMP piece on it. www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/ar...

"The White House, which sent Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer to the hearing, has said that they will turn to other tariff authorities if the court does not rule in its favour."

"Painting Taiwan’s leaders as 'reckless' sows the ground by making a moral case for a US abandonment of Taiwan that shifts the blame to Taiwan for resisting PRC annexation: “hey, they were reckless!” Variations on this approach have become common the last few years."

💯 👇 — it's the beginning of the end of Trump's suspension of political gravity.

Taiwan's top 20% are around 70 times richer than the bottom 20%. And the gap between the richest 20% and the poorest 20% has widened fourfold since 1991, creating a hotbed for #populism and provocateurs. This is a direct challenge to #Taiwanese #democracy. www.taipeitimes.com/News/taiwan/...

A 💯 must listen pod/analysis on the Trump Xi meeting 👇 "...conversation with Rush Doshi, the C.V. Starr senior fellow for Asia studies and director of the China Strategy Initiative at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and an assistant professor in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service."

Disqualified in the first paragraph bro "Taiwan, under President Lai Ching-te, has asserted its sovereignty in new and destabilizing ways.." 1,000% not true.

Most foreigners living in Taiwan do work that's much more important than mine. But they are being treated worse, have less rights and almost no long-term perspectives. I had a chance to tell a room full of Taiwanese and German academics and politicians what I think. www.youtube.com/watch?v=5L2c...

Such an important, honest and clear-eyed presentation. The truth about Taiwanese discrimination against Southeast Asian residents is sometimes best delivered by the person from whom the government most wants to hear praise. This talk has outsize potential in effecting precious reforms.

⛏️ Control over rare-earth minerals gives China the advantage. (34 percent) ⚖️ China and the U.S. have about the same amount of leverage in these negotiations. (33 percent) 💵The strength of the U.S. dollar gives Trump the edge. (33 percent) (Foreign Policy survey of readers)

No "assurance" that Xi offers can be trusted (nor Trump's assurances for that matter), as any reading of his devolution into one-man sovereign will show. Any assertion to the contrary is a political act. This commentator makes a living from diminishing victims of violence and threats. Beware.

Caught between China and the US, Europe stumbles towards its independence day My long-read on the latest EU push to break free from the chokeholds that threaten to snooker its geoeconomic revival

"China may outperform the United States in making electric vehicles. Russia has many more military mercenaries than America does. But both are far behind the United States and its democratic allies in the contest of ideas."

Curious how some commentators are so glibly urging the Trump administration to bend to Beijing's diktat toward a territory it has never controlled. "For the first time...the U.S. would specify peaceful unification as one of the outcomes it would accept" www.foreignaffairs.com/taiwan/towar...

"former US representative Mike Gallagher at a roundtable on Monday told Taiwanese reporters that the US would not use Taiwan as a bargaining chip in tariff negotiations with China. Gallagher said he could not sense any inclination or interest in the US to use Taiwan in a “great bargain” with China."

Michael McFaul "Four pillars of power helped the United States win the Cold War. The same pillars will almost certainly determine whether China or America wins today’s power competition—but instead of bolstering them, Trump is bulldozing them.”

I’m cautiously optimistic that our democratic institutions are stronger than Trump. But as I write in Autocrats vs. Democrats, this is the greatest test of American democracy in my lifetime — maybe since the Civil War. Out now: www.amazon.com/dp/0358677874

Puma Shen🇹🇼= GOAT (3x sanctioned by🇨🇳) Putting things in perspective, Marco Rubio🇺🇸 and Taiwan's🇹🇼 VP Hsiao has only been sanctioned by 🇨🇳 twice, while Puma Shen🇹🇼 has been sanctioned three times.

Ever feel like a friend, a culture—or even yourself—is starting to fade into the din of the feed? Each scroll, a little deeper into confirmation bias. Each post, a worldview drifting further from our neighbors. Every reaction, more out of context. Until all that’s left is the echo of who we were...