The number of foreign men who married Taiwanese women last year totaled 4,521, the highest number since 2003, the latest Ministry of the Interior (MOI) statistics showed.
In its regular report on marriage registrations nationwide, the ministry said 15,181 foreign women married Taiwanese men.
The report showed that 55.8 percent of all the foreign spouses who married last year were from China, Hong Kong or Macau; 27.7 percent were from Southeast Asian nations and 16.5 percent from elsewhere.
In total, 149,287 marriages were registered last year, 86.8 percent of which were between Taiwanese, the report released on Saturday said.
In 2003, the nation saw a spike in the number of transnational marriages to 31.86 percent of the total number registered nationwide.
More than 60 percent of transnational weddings that year involved Chinese spouses, which led authorities to suspect that marriage was being used as a means for foreigners to enter the nation and obtain residency, the ministry said in its latest report.
As a result, the ministry introduced an interview process for Chinese and other foreign nationals seeking to marry Taiwanese.
The percentage of transnational marriages dropped to 13.2 percent of the total in 2013 and last year, the ministry said.
Taiwan is to receive the first batch of Lockheed Martin F-16 Block 70 jets from the US late this month, a defense official said yesterday, after a year-long delay due to a logjam in US arms deliveries. Completing the NT$247.2 billion (US$7.69 billion) arms deal for 66 jets would make Taiwan the third nation in the world to receive factory-fresh advanced fighter jets of the same make and model, following Bahrain and Slovakia, the official said on condition of anonymity. F-16 Block 70/72 are newly manufactured F-16 jets built by Lockheed Martin to the standards of the F-16V upgrade package. Republic of China
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A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it