On the 93rd Academy Awards on April 25, director Chloé Zhao won two statuettes for Nomadland, her epic tale of a group of baby-boomers adrift in the great American West, and was nominated in no less than six categories. Rewarded in the United States, Chloé Zhao on the other hand became an outcast in her country of origin.

Sunday evening, during the 93rd Oscars ceremony, the filmmaker Chloe Zhao won the title for best director for Nomadland, an epic tale about a group of baby boomers drifting in the big American West. But in her country, she became an outcast.

There has been a series of recent developments in the relationship between the United States and Taiwan, including the signing of the memorandum of maritime patrol by the United States and Taiwan, and the first public visit to Taiwan by the US ambassador in 43 years. It is reported that the Biden administration is preparing to publish guidelines to relax restrictions on the exchanges between US and Taiwan officials. Analysis believes that this is not only a continuation of Trump's Taiwan policy, but also a symbol of the Biden administration's tough policy line toward China. Beijing continues to react fiercely.

A few months before Taiwan’s local elections in 2018, a tropical storm hit the city of Chiayi, killing at least six people and displacing thousands of others. President Tsai Ing-wen traveled to Chiayi to show her support for the flood victims, but soon after, an innocuous photo of the president riding in an armored vehicle became a nationwide scandal. The image was cropped and cast in black and white, and a caption was added, falsely suggesting that she came with armed gunmen and was smiling cruelly at the misfortune of a nearby man biking through knee-high floodwaters.

During the Ma Ying-jeou presidency in Taiwan (2008-2016), confrontations over relations with the People’s Republic of China stressed the country’s institutions, leading to a political crisis. Nevertheless, as documented in Dynamics of Democracy in Taiwan, a new book edited by Kharis Templeman, Yun-han Chu, and Larry Diamond, its democracy proved to be resilient. In this discussion, several of the book’s contributors will reflect on the politics of this era, and what subsequent developments tell us about the enduring strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan’s democracy.

Although some still hold a positive outlook for the trajectory of U.S.-China relations, many more now see different versions of a Cold War 2.0 as the basis for the interactions of the two hegemons. As more countries around the world start to flock to either one of the two camps, Taiwan, sandwiched in this rising power rivalry, has also been thinking about its next step. Some have advocated Taiwan follow a hedging policy or maintaining an equal distance between both countries to maximize its flexibility should geopolitics change dramatically. Such a viewpoint is wrong. As U.S.-China rivalry intensifies, it is in Taiwan’s best interests to stand closely with the United States and its allies as a global partner. It is also essential for U.S. policymakers to understand the Taiwanese debate dynamics on U.S. and China policy because U.S. policy vis-à-vis Taiwan certainly shape the broader agenda.

On July 22, 2020, the State Department announced that it has directed China to close its consulate in Houston for the purpose of “protecting intellectual property and private information of U.S. citizens.”

Top academic publisher Springer Nature has once more sparked concerns over its censorship of topics regarded as politically sensitive by Beijing.