Hoping to reduce the alleged negative impact of Chinese spouses in the country, the Cabinet yesterday decided to tighten immigration regulations for Chinese nationals -- effectively Chinese women -- until the national birth rate meets upgraded population goals.
"Immigration is like tap water. We don't want too much of it, but not too little either," Cabinet Spokesman Chen Chi-mai (
Under the new regulations, the annual number of Chinese immigrants will be set at 16 percent of the difference between the expected average population growth over the past three years and the actual growth.
This formula has resulted in an annual quota of 10,000 being imposed on Chinese immigrants over the next six years. The annual quota for permanent residency for Chinese nationals is also expected to drop to between 5,000 and 8,000 by 2010.
Around 9,700 of the 131,000 Chinese nationals resident in the country were granted permanent residency last year. About 42 percent of the total number of Chinese who obtained permanent residency last year did so through marriage.
An average of 2,110 non-Chinese foreign spouses and 7,249 Chinese spouses were granted permanent residency each year between 1999 and last year. Last year saw the total of Chinese and other foreign spouses rise to 280,000, or 1 percent of the population.
Last year saw one in every 3.1 marriages involve a foreign spouse, including Chinese spouses, and one in every 7.5 children born had a foreign parent, including Chinese parents.
Although Chinese spouses and their children bring many advantages to the country, there was a growing problem of many single Taiwanese women being unable to find partners, Chen said.
Figures showed that marrying at an older age had resulted in a lower birth rate, with the nation's total fertility rate (TFR) declining from 6.55 in 1955 to 1.22 last year. When a family planning program aiming for two children per family was introduced in 1964, the TFR was 5.1.
In response to the decreasing birth rate and a rise in the proportion of elderly people, the draft will encourage Taiwanese to have more children.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater