Between January and last month, 132,470 babies were born in Taiwan, a 0.5 percent increase from the same period last year, according to statistics released yesterday by the Ministry of the Interior.
The number of newborns for the whole of this year is expected to reach 200,000, according to the ministry’s estimates.
In the first eight months of the year, one out every 100 babies was born to couples in which one of the parents is from Hong Kong, Macau or China, according to the ministry.
Over the past decade, the rate of babies born to a mother who is a citizen of China, Hong Kong or Macau has dropped to 3.9 percent from 5.2 percent of the total, while the rate of babies born to a mother who is a foreign national has fallen to 2.7 percent from 8.1 percent in 2004, according to the ministry’s data.
Under the Republic of China Constitution, China, Hong Kong and Macau are not considered foreign territories.
In the first eight months of the year, Lienchiang County on Matsu Island had the highest “crude birth rate” — the average annual number of live births during a year per 1,000 people in the population estimated in the middle of the year — with 0.86 percent, while Keelung saw the lowest, at 0.36 percent, the statistics show.
The gender ratio among newborns was 107.4 boys to every 100 girls, the ministry said, adding that the ratio has fallen to below 108 boys to every 100 girls over the past four years, compared with a ratio of 110.6 boys to every 100 girls registered in 2004.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift