Taiwan was ranked 25th in the Corruption Perception Index for last year, up three spots from its ranking a year earlier, a report published on Monday by Transparency International showed.
The Germany-based nonprofit group said Taiwan scored 68 out of 100 — the nation’s highest ranking since the index launched in 1995 — placing it in the 86th percentile.
The index, which measures the perceived level of corruption in a nation’s public sector according to experts and businesspeople, ranks 180 countries and territories, the group said.
The countries perceived to be the least corrupt last year were Denmark, Finland and New Zealand, while Afghanistan, North Korea and Yemen were perceived to be the most corrupt.
Taiwan was tied with Bhutan for being the sixth least corrupt country in the Asia Pacific region, behind Japan, Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore and New Zealand, the group said.
The average score for the region’s 31 countries was 45, it said.
China scored 45 and was ranked 66th in the index, while North Korea scored 16 and placed 174th, the group said.
The two countries underperformed in relation to other states and territories in the Asia Pacific region, it added.
The Ministry of Justice’s Agency Against Corruption on Tuesday said that Taiwan’s ranking reflects the strides that have been made in combating public sector corruption, which affects the business environment.
Taiwan has dedicated significant time and energy to drafting effective anti-corruption laws, including a bill for protecting whistle-blowers, as well as a bill for transparency in public contracts and government projects, it said.
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:
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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