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President Tsai wins John McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service

President Tsai Ing-wen is winner of the 2020 John McCain Prize for Leadership in Public Service announced May 4 by Washington-headquartered Halifax International Security Forum.

The diversity of Taiwan’s media is reflected in the plethora of outlets and intense competition within the industry. The nation’s press operates in a media environment that is one of the freest in Asia. Taiwan was ranked the top Asian nation for the sixth consecutive year in the 2018 World Press Freedom Index released April 25 by France-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF). In the survey of 180 countries and territories, Taiwan jumped three places to 42nd, one ahead of South Korea, with Japan, 67th; Hong Kong, 70th; Singapore, 151st; and China, 176th. Norway, Sweden and the Netherlands topped the index, in that order.

While Taiwan may be described as a predominantly Han Chinese society, with more than 95 percent of the population claiming Han ancestry, its heritage is actually much more complex. The successive waves of Chinese immigrants that began arriving in the 17th century belonged to a variety of subgroups with mutually unintelligible languages and different customs.Today in Taiwan, however, distinctions between them have become blurred as a result of extensive intermarriage and the universal use of Mandarin. Taiwan has been a melting pot not only of diverse Han subgroups, but also of indigenous Malayo-Polynesian peoples and immigrants from all over the world. Recent years, for example, have seen an influx of new arrivals from China and Southeast Asia, mostly through marriage. Currently, the number of new immigrants is nearly 500,000.

The Republic of China (Taiwan) is situated in the West Pacific between Japan and the Philippines. Its jurisdiction extends to the archipelagoes of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu, as well as numerous other islets. The total area of Taiwan proper and its outlying islands is around 36,197 square kilometers.At about the size of the Netherlands, but with a population of some 23 million, Taiwan is more populous than three-quarters of the world’s nations. Taiwan proper has more than its share of natural splendor. Mountain ranges with many peaks reaching over 3,000 meters—including East Asia’s highest, Jade Mountain (Yushan)—and forested foothills occupy more than half of its area.The island also features volcanic mountains, tablelands, coastal plains and basins. The Diaoyutai Islands, which lie northeast of Taiwan, and a number of islands in the South China Sea, including those in the Tungsha (Pratas), Nansha (Spratly), Shisha (Paracel) and Chungsha (Macclesfield Bank) islands, are also part of the territory of the ROC.