Yearbook 2012
Taiwan. In the January elections, incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou and his nationalist party Guomindang won. He will now sit for another four years and be able to pursue his Beijing-friendly policy. Opposition leader Tsai Ing-wen and her party Democratic Progress Party (DPP) admitted early defeat after a relatively even election. Ma Ying-jeou and his Guomindang won 51.5% of the vote, while Tsai Ing-wen and DDP got about 45.5%. Taiwan has had autonomy since 1949, but China sees the country as part of its territory. The constant threat from China has therefore come to characterize the elections.
Two notable deaths related to computer games occurred during the year. In January, a 23-year-old man was found dead in his chair at a cyber cafe in central Taipei. The man had been dead for nine hours without any of the other 30 guests responding. According to Sky News, his body had solidified and his hands were stretched against the mouse and the keyboard. The cause of death was a heart attack, and the game he devoted himself to was the League of Legends. In July, an 18-year-old died after spending 40 hours in front of the computer screen at an Internet cafe. He had booked a private room and then spent almost two days playing the online game “Diablo III “. According to the police, the many sedentary hours may have caused cardiovascular problems in the man.
- AbbreviationFinder.org: Provides most commonly used acronyms and abbreviations for Taiwan. Also includes location map, major cities, and country overview.
In the dispute over the archipelago that Japan calls Senkaku and China calls Diaoyu, Taiwan has also claimed the islands, then under the name Tiaoyutai. At the end of September, a large group of Taiwanese patrol boats escorted some forty fishing vessels into the sea area in which the islands lie. Japanese coastguard vessels water-fired the fishing boats. Large deposits of gas and oil beneath the seabed around the islands are fuels in the conflict.
In March 2016, new President Tsai appointed Lin Chuan his new prime minister. He took over the post in May, but resigned in September 2017 due to the rapidly declining popularity of President Tsais. When Tsai took over the presidential post in May 2016, her popularity was 70%, but 15 months later it had dropped to below 30%. As new prime minister, President William Lai – the popular Tainan mayor inaugurated. Lai envisaged a series of labor market reforms that encountered great resistance in the trade union movement: the minimum number of hours of rest between two working days should be reduced from 11 hours to 8, and the number of uninterrupted working days should be increased from 6 to 11. Both measures there reflected the economic crisis in the country that according to. the government needed to be addressed by working harder and longer.
In May 2017, the Constitutional Court issued a ruling that the country’s marriage laws violated the constitution, with the marriage of 2 people of the same sex being banned. The court gave Parliament two years to draft a new marriage law. Otherwise, LGBTI marriages will automatically be allowed after May 2019.
In August 2018, El Salvador cut off diplomatic relations with Taiwan and instead established relations with China. A number of Latin American countries had been connected with Taiwan since the Cold War in the 1950s rather than with China. They remained stuck in the void despite the fact that the US thawed relations with China in 1969. China’s global economic position had strengthened over 50 years and now motivated El Salvador to shift its diplomatic orientation. Only 17 countries continued to have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Population 2012
According to countryaah, the population of Taiwan in 2012 was 23,557,366, ranking number 54 in the world. The population growth rate was 0.320% yearly, and the population density was 665.2775 people per km2.