China's Vice Premier Wu Yi (
The Forbes list of the world's 100 most powerful women was topped by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser of US President George W. Bush, according to a Forbes press statement released here.
Top Singapore businesswoman Ho Ching (
Sonia Gandhi, the president of India's ruling Congress Party who wields immense influence behind the scenes after turning down the job of prime minister, came in third.
In fourth place was US First Lady Laura Bush, followed by Senator Hillary Clinton and Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor. Another US Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was in seventh place, trailed by Megawati, Arroyo and Hewlett-Packard chair and chief executive Carly Fiorina.
Forbes said it came up with the list by devising a power scorecard.
"For each candidate, we came up with a numerical weight defined by her title and resume, the size of the economic sphere in which she wields power ... and the number of global media mentions," the magazine said.
Among the other Asia-Pacific women in the list are Bangladesh Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia (14), New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark (43), Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga (44) and Myanmar opposition leader Ang San Suu Kyi (45).
Singapore's Ho, who runs state investment arm Temasek Holdings, was No. 24, reflecting her influence as manager of the city-state's multibillion-dollar global business empire.
Peng Peiyun, president of the All-China Women's Federation, was No. 47 on the list, while Xie Qihua, chairwoman and president of the Shanghai Baosteel Group (
Forbes said the list had made "a refreshing break from the conventional wisdom about women and power" by breaking the notion that women can only gain power by working behind the scenes and forging consensus.
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was 21st on the list, while the UK's first lady, Cherie Blair, was number 12.
Queen Rania of Jordan was in 13th place, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II in 22nd place and television host Barbara Walters was in 25th place.
GROWING OWINGS: While Luxembourg and China swapped the top three spots, the US continued to be the largest exposure for Taiwan for the 41st consecutive quarter The US remained the largest debtor nation to Taiwan’s banking sector for the 41st consecutive quarter at the end of September, after local banks’ exposure to the US market rose more than 2 percent from three months earlier, the central bank said. Exposure to the US increased to US$198.896 billion, up US$4.026 billion, or 2.07 percent, from US$194.87 billion in the previous quarter, data released by the central bank showed on Friday. Of the increase, about US$1.4 billion came from banks’ investments in securitized products and interbank loans in the US, while another US$2.6 billion stemmed from trust assets, including mutual funds,
Micron Memory Taiwan Co (台灣美光), a subsidiary of US memorychip maker Micron Technology Inc, has been granted a NT$4.7 billion (US$149.5 million) subsidy under the Ministry of Economic Affairs A+ Corporate Innovation and R&D Enhancement program, the ministry said yesterday. The US memorychip maker’s program aims to back the development of high-performance and high-bandwidth memory chips with a total budget of NT$11.75 billion, the ministry said. Aside from the government funding, Micron is to inject the remaining investment of NT$7.06 billion as the company applied to participate the government’s Global Innovation Partnership Program to deepen technology cooperation, a ministry official told the
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s leading advanced chipmaker, officially began volume production of its 2-nanometer chips in the fourth quarter of this year, according to a recent update on the company’s Web site. The low-key announcement confirms that TSMC, the go-to chipmaker for artificial intelligence (AI) hardware providers Nvidia Corp and iPhone maker Apple Inc, met its original roadmap for the next-generation technology. Production is currently centered at Fab 22 in Kaohsiung, utilizing the company’s first-generation nanosheet transistor technology. The new architecture achieves “full-node strides in performance and power consumption,” TSMC said. The company described the 2nm process as
JOINT EFFORTS: MediaTek would partner with Denso to develop custom chips to support the car-part specialist company’s driver-assist systems in an expanding market MediaTek Inc (聯發科), the world’s largest mobile phone chip designer, yesterday said it is working closely with Japan’s Denso Corp to build a custom automotive system-on-chip (SoC) solution tailored for advanced driver-assistance systems and cockpit systems, adding another customer to its new application-specific IC (ASIC) business. This effort merges Denso’s automotive-grade safety expertise and deep vehicle integration with MediaTek’s technologies cultivated through the development of Media- Tek’s Dimensity AX, leveraging efficient, high-performance SoCs and artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to offer a scalable, production-ready platform for next-generation driver assistance, the company said in a statement yesterday. “Through this collaboration, we are bringing two
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