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.
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