A quarter of the 173,000 Taiwanese men who got married last year did so to a foreign woman, Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) figures showed yesterday.
The majority of these women came from China, Hong Kong and Macau, with the others coming from Southeast Asian countries such as Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand.
According to a survey released last month by Ministry of the Interior's Department of Household Registration, foreign women are the best, and sometimes only, choice for Taiwanese men who are old, handicapped or from rural areas of the country such as Penghu, Yunlin, Chiayi, Nantou and Pingtung.
Another reason for the rise in foreign spouses could be the increasing independence of Taiwanese women, which for some makes them less appealing as wives.
"Taiwanese girls of the younger generation are too wild and lack loyalty to their husbands," said a 26-year-old taxi driver in Taipei. "Foreign girls from Southeast Asia and China are more submissive."
The immigration of these foreign brides has begun to influence the country's demographics. A decade ago, the ratio of men to women was 106 to 100.
With the influx of 230,000 foreign women over the past 10 years, this ratio has fallen to 103.95 to 100.
"The immigration of foreign brides is an important factor in this," Chen Tzu-ho (陳子和), section chief of the department of population at the Ministry of the Interior, said yesterday. "And it has caused many social problems."
One of these is the cultural and language gap between the foreign brides and their husbands and children, according to an interior ministry report published two months ago.
"Most foreign mates are not accustomed to society here," the report said. "They lack a network of support from friends and family, which usually causes their families with Taiwanese to disintegrate."
The children of such unions are another emerging social problem. Most of the foreign mothers have received only a minimum education and may be too young to assume their maternal responsibilities.
"And if the mothers cannot speak Mandarin, how can the children learn from them?" Chen said.
Chen said his ministry was working on a plan with other government agencies to deal with the problem.
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