President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) ranked ninth on Forbes magazine’s list of the most powerful women in the world, moving up 28 spots from last year’s ranking.
Forbes highlighted that Tsai became Taiwan’s first female and unmarried leader in 2016, and was re-elected last year with more than 57 percent of the popular vote.
The magazine said her re-election was a “rebuke to Beijing’s efforts to control the island.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
Tsai has made protocol-breaking overtures to the US, which has created tensions with China, it said.
Forbes commended her leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic and her efforts in stimulating the economy with initiatives focused on biotechnology, defense and green energy to make Taiwan “an indispensable member of the world.”
Tsai made the list for the sixth-straight year since her first listing in 2016, when she was ranked 17th. Last year, she was 37th.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) president and CEO Lisa Su (蘇姿丰), who was born in Tainan and migrated to the US as a child, ranked 49th on this year’s list.
Under Su, who trained as an electrical engineer, AMD’s stock price has risen more than 25-fold, Forbes said, adding that the company made one of the greatest turnarounds in the technology sector in the past few years.
US novelist and philanthropist Mackenzie Scott topped the list, after she in 2019 pledged to give away half of her wealth.
Scott, the former wife of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has thus far donated about US$8 billion to more than 500 nonprofit organizations, including US$2.74 billion granted to 286 groups in June, the magazine said.
US Vice President Kamala Harris ranked second, after she early last year was the first black and Asian-American woman to assume the second-highest office in the country, it said.
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
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More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
The first bluefin tuna of the season, brought to shore in Pingtung County and weighing 190kg, was yesterday auctioned for NT$10,600 (US$333.5) per kilogram, setting a record high for the local market. The auction was held at the fish market in Donggang Fishing Harbor, where the Siaoliouciou Island-registered fishing vessel Fu Yu Ching No. 2 delivered the “Pingtung First Tuna” it had caught for bidding. Bidding was intense, and the tuna was ultimately jointly purchased by a local restaurant and a local company for NT$10,600 per kilogram — NT$300 ,more than last year — for a total of NT$2.014 million. The 67-year-old skipper
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