The Spectator
Date: 22 May 2020

After a landslide victory in January’s election, Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen was re-inaugurated on Wednesday at a scaled-down ceremony in Taipei. As ever, Taiwan’s relationship with China was the central issue of the election. This year, though, a greater sense of urgency surrounded the vote, primarily because of the instability in Hong Kong. 

Now, polling day feels like it belongs to a distant past, taking place amid rumblings of a new virus infecting residents of Wuhan across the Taiwan Strait.

Although Taiwan has rightly received much praise for its response to coronavirus, the past few months have not been without significant difficulties. Above all, coronavirus has reinvigorated discussion of Taiwan’s position on the global stage and its exclusion from the World Health Organisation (WHO) at the hands of the Chinese government. 

Taiwan’s already precarious position relative to the WHO was compounded last month when the organisation's director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus accused Taiwan of launching a racist campaign against him.   [FULL  STORY]

Festival takes place in December and has been hosted by National Central Library, public libraries since 2013

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/22
By: Lyla Liu, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) – The Taiwan Ministry of Education announced Friday (May 22) that the 2020 Taiwan Reading Festival (台灣閱讀節) won the American Library Association (ALA) award.

The annual cultural event, "Taiwan Reading Festival," takes place in December and has been hosted by the National Central Library and public libraries since 2013. It features a variety of events that aim to promote reading, according to the ministry.

This year, the program for the upcoming festival won the International Library Innovation Service ALA award, along with three other projects worldwide, the ministry added. This is the third time the National Central Library has won the prize.

The digital publishing platform system and Taiwan Resource Center for Chinese Studies won the first two times, said the ministry.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 05/22/2020
By: Flor Wang and Chiang Chin-yeh

Washington, May 21 (CNA) Randall G. Schriver, a former United States assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, said Thursday that Taiwan has won huge global support because of its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, despite China's suppression.

"Taiwan's international recognition, international admiration for Taiwan, international support for Taiwan has almost never been higher, because we see the juxtaposition of how the PRC has handled the coronavirus and how Taiwan has," Schriver said at a virtual conference hosted by the Wilson Center in Washington, D.C.

Schriver also berated China for poaching Taiwan's diplomatic allies and seeking to exclude Taiwan from global bodies like the World Health Organization.

The Communist Party of China's "approach to Taiwan has failed, not by my measure but by their own measure," he said in the forum, titled U.S.-Taiwan Relations and Taiwan's Evolving Role in the Global Order.    [FULL  STORY]

Taipei Times
Date: May 23, 2020
By: Lin Chia-nan / Staff reporter

Nematode-trapping fungi have been found to be natural killers of nematodes and their mechanisms might facilitate the development of new drugs or biological control agents, an Academia Sinica researcher said yesterday.

Mostly measuring less than 1mm, nematodes are found in soil worldwide and most are not visible to the naked eye, Academia Sinica Institute of Molecular Biology assistant research fellow Hsueh Yen-ping (薛雁冰) told a news conference in Taipei.

Some nematodes can cause infections in humans or damage plants, but existing pesticides, such as ivermectin, aldicarb and levamisole, can only inhibit their activity and the poisons’ efficacy are declining due to their wide use over the past few decades, she said.

Hsueh’s team found that oyster mushrooms, when starving, prey on nematodes by producing potent toxins that can paralyze them within minutes.    [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan International
Date:\ 20 May, 2020
By: John Van Trieste

Deputy Economics Minister Wang Mei-hua says that coupons designed to help the economy recover from COVID-19 will be available starting in July.

Deputy Economics Minister Wang Mei-hua says that coupons designed to help the economy recover from COVID-19 will be available starting in July.

Wang said on Wednesday that the launch date for the coupon program has been chosen to roughly coincide with the start of the school summer holidays.    [FULL  STORY]

Voice of America
Date: May 20, 2020
By: Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI, TAIWAN – Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen vowed Wednesday to step up defense following a series of bigger-than-normal threats by her government’s longtime rival China. 

“While we work to bolster our defense capabilities, future combat capacity development will also emphasize mobility, countermeasures, and non-traditional, asymmetrical capabilities,” Tsai said in a speech to mark the start of her second term in office. She was reelected in January. 

China maintains the world’s third strongest military and Taiwan ranks 26th by the database GlobalFirePower.com. Asymmetric warfare means use of strategy or unconventional arms, such as submarines, against an overall stronger enemy. 

The People’s Liberation Army from Beijing is getting ready for amphibious military exercises in the South China Sea possibly to simulate the takeover of three tiny islets that Taiwan controls as part of a marine national park, analysts and media reports in Asia say. The islands sit in a strategic spot between northeast and southeast Asia. Taiwan’s coast guard has a garrison on one.     [FULL  STORY]

Taiwan to gradually open up country to foreign tourists starting Oct. 1

Taiwan News
Date: 2020/05/20
By: Keoni Everington, Taiwan News, Staff Writer

TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan is planning to gradually reopen transportation and tourism in three stages, the last of which will allow foreign tourists to visit the country in October, according to the Ministry of Transportation and Communications (MOTC).

As Taiwan has been able to bring its Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak under control, with no new imported cases in 13 days and zero local infections in 38 days, Transportation Minister Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) at a press conference on Friday (May 15) announced a three-stage draft plan to relax epidemic prevention restrictions on transportation and travel. The third stage will allow foreign tourists to enter the country.    [FULL  STORY]

Focus Taiwan
Date: 05/20/2020
By Liu Kuang-ting, Yu Hsiang and Joseph Yeh

opposition party, "an unfamiliar role" for an organization that has spent most of the past 70 years in a position of power

in Taiwan.

In an interview with CNA, Chiang Chi-chen (江啟臣), who is also a legislator, said the 126-year-old party was once Taiwan's only party and has governed the country for a long period of time.

It was not until 2016 that the party found itself completely in opposition, having lost the presidential election and not being in the majority in the Legislature, Chiang said.

What the KMT quickly learned is that "we are definitely not good at being an opposition party," Chiang admitted.   [FULL  STORY]

Radio Taiwan Internatinal
Date: 19 May, 2020
By: Natalie Tso

Kolas Yotaka (CNA photo)[/caption] Taiwan is going to have a female Presidential Office spokesperson for the first time – Kolas Yotaka. That’s a part of the minor Cabinet shuffle that is happening as President Tsai Ing-wen is inaugurated for her second term on Wednesday.

The glass ceiling is breaking in Taiwan politics.  Not only is Taiwan inaugurating its first female president Tsai Ing-wen to a second term, 42% of its lawmakers are women, and the new Presidential Office Spokesperson is Kolas Yotaka, the first woman to hold the job.

When the announcement was made on Tuesday, she shared that she has served as the Democratic Progressive Party spokesperson and the Executive Yuan spokesperson.    [FULL  STORY]

The Standard
Date: 20 May 2020

United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a congratulatory message for Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen's inauguration, becoming the first high-level foreign government official to do so.

"Her re-election by a huge margin shows that she has earned the respect, admiration, and trust of the people on Taiwan," Pompeo said in the statement yesterday, CNA reports.    [FULL  STORY]