Portal:Taiwan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Taiwan portal logo
Taiwan portal logo

Main   Geography   Recognized content

Introduction

Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia. It is located at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast, and the Philippines to the south. The territories controlled by the ROC consist of 168 islands with a combined area of 36,193 square kilometres (13,974 square miles). The main island of Taiwan, also known as Formosa, has an area of 35,808 square kilometres (13,826 square miles), with mountain ranges dominating the eastern two-thirds and plains in the western third, where its highly urbanized population is concentrated. The capital, Taipei, forms along with New Taipei City and Keelung the largest metropolitan area. With around 23.9 million inhabitants, Taiwan is among the most densely populated countries.

Taiwan has been settled for at least 25,000 years. Ancestors of Taiwanese indigenous peoples settled the island around 6,000 years ago. In the 17th century, large-scale Han Chinese immigration began under a Dutch colony and continued under the Kingdom of Tungning, the first predominantly Han Chinese state in Taiwanese history. The island was annexed in 1683 by the Qing dynasty of China and ceded to the Empire of Japan in 1895. The Republic of China, which had overthrown the Qing in 1912, took control following the surrender of Japan in 1945. Japan renounced sovereignty over Taiwan in 1952. The immediate resumption of the Chinese Civil War resulted in the loss of the Chinese mainland to Communist forces, who established the People's Republic of China, and the flight of the ROC central government to Taiwan in 1949. The effective jurisdiction of the ROC has since been limited to Taiwan, Penghu, and smaller islands.

In the early 1960s, Taiwan entered a period of rapid economic growth and industrialization called the "Taiwan Miracle". In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the ROC transitioned from a one-party state under martial law to a multi-party democracy, with democratically elected presidents since 1996. Taiwan's export-oriented industrial economy is the 21st-largest in the world by nominal GDP and the 20th-largest by PPP measures, with a focus on steel, machinery, electronics, and chemicals manufacturing. Taiwan is a developed country. It is ranked highly in terms of civil liberties, healthcare, and human development.

The political status of Taiwan is contentious. The ROC no longer represents China as a member of the United Nations after UN members voted in 1971 to recognize the PRC instead. The ROC maintained its claim of being the sole legitimate representative of China and its territory until 1991, when it ceased to regard the CCP as a rebellious group and recognized its control over mainland China. Taiwan is claimed by the PRC, which refuses to establish diplomatic relations with countries that recognise the ROC. Taiwan maintains official diplomatic relations with 11 out of 193 UN member states and the Holy See. Many others maintain unofficial diplomatic ties through representative offices and institutions that function as de facto embassies and consulates. International organizations in which the PRC participates either refuse to grant membership to Taiwan or allow it to participate on a non-state basis. Domestically, the major political contention is between parties favoring eventual Chinese unification and promoting a pan-Chinese identity, contrasted with those aspiring to formal international recognition and promoting a Taiwanese identity; into the 21st century, both sides have moderated their positions to broaden their appeal. (Full article...)

Clockwise from the top: A night view of Xiying Rainbow Bridge, Zhongyang Old Street, Qimei Double-Heart of Stacked Stones, Baisha Beach, Penghu Tianhou Temple, Budai Harbor

The Penghu (/ˈpʌŋˈh/ PUNG-HOO, Hokkien POJ: Phîⁿ-ô͘  or Phêⁿ-ô͘ ) or Pescadores Islands are an archipelago of 90 islands and islets in the Taiwan Strait, located approximately 50 km (31 mi) west of the main island of Taiwan across the Penghu Channel, covering an area of 141 square kilometers (54 sq mi). The archipelago collectively forms Penghu County of Taiwan and is the smallest county of Taiwan. The largest city is Magong, located on the largest island, which is also named Magong.

The Penghu islands first appear in the historical record during the Tang dynasty and were inhabited by Chinese people under the Southern Song dynasty, during which they were attached to Jinjiang County of Fujian. The archipelago was formally incorporated as an administrative unit of China in 1281 under Tong'an County of Jiangzhe Province during the Yuan dynasty. It continued to be controlled by Imperial China with brief European occupations by the Dutch Empire (1622–1624) and Second French colonial empire (1885), until it was ceded to the Japanese Empire in 1895. Since the end of World War II, Penghu has been governed by the Republic of China (ROC). Under the terms of the Sino-American Mutual Defense Treaty and the subsequent Taiwan Relations Act between the ROC and the United States, Penghu is defined and geographically acknowledged as part of Taiwan. (Full article...)

Selected biography

Chiau Wen-yan (Chinese: 邱文彥; pinyin: Qiū Wényàn: born 17 July 1953) is a Taiwanese politician. He was the member of Legislative Yuan, a professor and the former director of the Institute of Marine Affairs and Resource Management at National Taiwan Ocean University. (Full article...)

Selected picture - show another

Holy Rosary Cathedral
Holy Rosary Cathedral
The Holy Rosary Cathedral in Lingya, Kaohsiung is the oldest Catholic church in Taiwan, established in 1860 and rebuilt in 1928.

Photo credit: User:小鄧

Good article - show another

This is a Good article, an article that meets a core set of high editorial standards.

A sample of pe̍h-ōe-jī text

Pe̍h-ōe-jī (Taiwanese Hokkien: [pe˩ˀ o̯e̞˩ d͡ʑi˧] , English approximation: /ˌpɛɔɪ/ PEH-oy-JEE; abbr. POJ; lit.'vernacular writing'), sometimes known as Church Romanization, is an orthography used to write variants of Hokkien Southern Min, particularly Taiwanese and Amoy Hokkien, and it is widely employed as one of the writing systems for Southern Min. During its peak, it had hundreds of thousands of readers.

Developed by Western missionaries working among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia in the 19th century and refined by missionaries working in Xiamen and Tainan, it uses a modified Latin alphabet and some diacritics to represent the spoken language. After initial success in Fujian, POJ became most widespread in Taiwan and, in the mid-20th century, there were over 100,000 people literate in POJ. A large amount of printed material, religious and secular, has been produced in the script, including Taiwan's first newspaper, the Taiwan Church News. (Full article...)
Acer's logo since 2011.
Acer's logo since 2011.
  • ... that Acer (pictured) is ranked as one of the world's top five branded PC vendors and has a history dating to 1976?
  • ... that Taipei was the first city in the world to roll out a city-wide Wi-Fi network with 4,000 hot spots serving a city population of 2.6 million?

General images

The following are images from various Taiwan-related articles on Wikipedia.

On this day...

In the news

20 April 2024 – Military aid to Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War, United States support for Israel in the Israel–Hamas war
The U.S. House of Representatives passes a series of bills that would provide $95 billion in military aid to countries including Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. (ABC News)
3 April 2024 – 2024 Hualien earthquake
A magnitude 7.4 earthquake strikes off the coast of Taiwan, prompting tsunami warnings for Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. A large section of the uninhabited Guishan Island collapses into the ocean. Nine people are killed in Taiwan, including four by rockfalls, with more than 930 others injured. (AP) (Al Jazeera)
3 April 2024 – Cross-Strait relations
The National Defense Ministry of Taiwan says that more than 30 Chinese PLA Air Force warplanes have entered Taiwanese airspace and that at least nine PLA Navy warships have been detected around Taiwan. The ROC Armed Forces are deployed in response to the violation. (Times Now News)

Topics

Categories

Category puzzle
Category puzzle
Select [►] to view subcategories

Administrative divisions

Related portals


East Asia

Southeast Asia

Portals listed here are related to Taiwan by way of history, Asian region, diplomatic relations with ROC, and significant diaspora of overseas Taiwanese

Projects

You are cordially invited to join and contribute to WikiProject Taiwan, a WikiProject dedicated to the development and improvement of articles relating to Taiwan.

Associated Wikimedia

The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:

Sources

Discover Wikipedia using portals