Statistics on foreign spouses in Taiwan

[momopi]

Some of you may recall that I frequently cite the "over 400,000 foreign brides" in Taiwan figure. To be more clear, I'm going to cite ROC (TW) department of immigration statistics from Dec 2010, quoted on the Chinese wiki article: http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%A4%96% ... 7%81%A3%29

Country of Origin / Number of foreign spouses in TW
==================================
PRC / 285,158
HK & Macao / 12,079
Vietnam / 84,246
Indonesia / 26,980
Thailand / 7,970
Philippines / 6,888
Cambodia / 4,306
Japan / 3,270
Korea / 1,037
Other / 12,282

Total: 444,216


Some interesting notes:
- Taiwanese (Hoklo) prefer to import Vietnamese brides, versus Hakka prefers to import Indonesian brides.
- Just because the bride is from Vietnam does not necessarily mean that she is ethnically Vietnamese. Approx. 73% of Vietnamese brides are ethnic Viet, and 27% are ethnic Chinese (Chinese-Viet).


Non-foreign bride residents of TW are cataloged here:
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9C%A8% ... B%E4%BA%BA

In 2011, there were 466,206 foreign residents in TW who were not foreign brides. Of these, 367,666 were laborers vs 6,748 were foreign teachers. This figure does not include undocumented foreign laborers.

TW's total population is about 23 million, of which 1-2 million reside in China, and ~1 million foreigner & foreign-born residents reside in Taiwan. However, if were to exclude ethnic Chinese from the foreign resident category, then the figure will fall to ~600,000.

[Falcon]

Thanks Momopi. This topic highly fascinates me.

Another great read would be "Asian Cross-border Marriage Migration"
http://dare.uva.nl/document/174579


I INTRODUCTION
1 Introduction 15
Melody Chia-Wen Lu and Wen-Shan Yang
2 Marriage Migration to East Asia: Current Issues and
Propositions in Making Comparisons 31
Yen-Fen Tseng

II DEMOGRAPHIC PATTERNS
3 Feminization of Immigration in Japan: Marital and Job
Opportunities 49
Kao-Lee Liaw, Emiko Ochiai and Yoshitaka Ishikawa
4 Examining Cross-border Marriage in Hong Kong: 1998-2005 87
Zhongdong (John) Ma, Ge Lin and Frank Zhang
5 Minority Group Status and Fertility: The Case of
the ‘Foreign Brides’ in Taiwan 103
Wen-Shan Yang and Marloes Schoonheim
6 The Rise of Cross-border Marriage and Divorce in
Contemporary Korea 127
Doo-Sub Kim

III SOCIAL ISSUES
7 Vietnamese-Taiwanese Marriages 157
Xoan Nguyen and Xuyen Tran8 Cross-border Marriages: Experiences of Village Women
from Northeastern Thailand with Western Men 179
Ratana Tosakul
9 Foreign Spouses’ Acculturation in Taiwan:
A Comparison of Their Countries of Origin, Gender,
and Education Degrees 201
Yu-Ching Yeh
10 Transnational Families among Muslims:
The Effect of Social Capital on Educational Strategies 221
Shuko Takeshita

Contributors 241
Collective Bibliography 245

[Falcon]

Comments on Taiwanese Marriage Trend Spark Outrage
http://www.voanews.com/content/controve ... 80993.html


Chang said during a debate on policies for new immigrants that men often prefer the women from overseas. She said the trend of seeking wives from outside Taiwan has caused "tremendous losses to the nation" and suggested that the government offer a subsidy to the island’s unmarried women.

Chang is telling a parliamentary meeting that whenever a foreign bride comes in, a Taiwanese woman is being passed over. There are only so many men on the island, she argues, so Taiwan is left with many women who may never marry.

...

A group of foreign wives protested in Taipei on Friday to defend their qualifications as spouses. At the same time, Taiwanese women demonstrated to demand that lawmakers stay out of their decisions to marry or stay single.

...

Chang has expressed surprise about the outrage she sparked. She says she only wanted to call on men to see Taiwanese women as skillful, healthy and able to weather hardships.


==========

Vietnamese women wed foreigners to aid family
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26124698/ns ... id-family/

"Their husbands are gentle, handsome and hardworking," Sach said. "They are really fine men." (Wake up Winston! )

...

Life is not so good, however, for the young men in Tan Loc who watch the exodus of marriage-aged women with despair.

"If all the girls leave," said Nguyen Hoang Mong, 19. "there won't be anyone left for us. Marriage shouldn't be about money. It should be about love."

[Falcon]

http://www.sole-jole.org/13257.pdf

Beggar-Thy-Women: Domestic Responses to Foreign Bride Competition, the case of Taiwan


Statistics also show that this is even more common in Taiwan than in South Korea or Japan.

In 1990, only 2 percent of newly married brides in Taiwan were foreign. By 2003, this number had risen to 29%. This phenomenon is not isolated to Taiwan. In 2006, 10% of brides in South Korea and 5% of brides in Japan were foreign.

http://www.ined.fr/fichier/t_telecharge ... esa469.pdf

http://www.ari.nus.edu.sg/docs/wps/wps12_174.pdf

[momopi]

Keep in mind that the stats may not include the numerous Taiwanese men that moved to China and hooked up with local girls.

[Repatriate]

I don't see what the outrage is about. Taiwan has a really low birth rate. The children being born are still half-"taiwanese" and are growing up in a society where they will most likely be speaking fluent mandarin/Taiwanese and following the cultural protocol of the local people. Appearance wise they aren't going to look all that different in most cases either, the next generation of girls may even end up being a lot sexier.

[Maverick]

Stories likes this make me happy. Good for those Taiwanese guys!

[momopi]

Chang is telling a parliamentary meeting that whenever a foreign bride comes in, a Taiwanese woman is being passed over. There are only so many men on the island, she argues, so Taiwan is left with many women who may never marry.

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/ ... in-taiwan/

"Sex-selective abortions in Taiwan create a serious gender imbalance, which is second only to that of China. Between 2004 and 2010, the Taiwanese gender ratio at birth was between 108 and 112 boys for every 100 girls, compared to the worldwide average ratio of around 106 males to 100 females. The government estimated that there were around 3,000 ‘missing’ female babies each year.

Taiwan has an amazingly high number of abortions each year. The official figure is around 90,000 but experts estimate more than 300,000 occur annually in a country whose population is only 23 million. Like in China, India and Pakistan, sex-selective abortions are common because male children are traditionally valued more highly than females. The Taiwanese government now want to make the practice impossible by preventing doctors from gender screening of foetuses."


There is no "surplus women" in Taiwan by birth. Due to sex-selective abortions, there are more marriage-age Taiwanese men vs. Taiwanese women. At peak of importing foreign brides, TW's marriage-age gender ratio had barely evened out for a couple of years. What would cause an imbalance is the numerous Taiwanese men who moved to China to live and work, which far out-numbers the import brides.

[kai1275]

Keep in mind that the stats may not include the numerous Taiwanese men that moved to China and hooked up with local girls.

Taiwanese men have soo many advantages over a typical mainland Chinese guy, it isn't even funny. They literally can pick any woman they want. Their better manners alone allow them to have a deeper dating pool. Mainland women wont shun any of them either unless they are just super super ugly.

[Jester]

As a gweilo observor, I find it interesting that the relative undesirability of Taiwanese women is so much greater than even that of AW.

Is this because Taiwan has same-race neighbors living in relative poverty? Like if Canada had the per-capita of income of Romania?

Or is it because Chinese men are looking for brides, not lays?

[kai1275]

As a gweilo observor, I find it interesting that the relative undesirability of Taiwanese women is so much greater than even that of AW.

Is this because Taiwan has same-race neighbors living in relative poverty? Like if Canada had the per-capita of income of Romania?

Or is it because Chinese men are looking for brides, not lays?

You have to understand Chinese culture to fully understand it. Even ethnic Chinese in Taiwan are expected to have certain things in order to get married. Taiwanese women have higher demands these days, and men that do not have as much as some of their peers can go to a place like the mainland and get a girl that is just as pretty, if not more, and they will probably have more money than them and impress their family. Some Taiwanese men do not have resource/money reasons, they just cannot stand the bad attitudes they get from the local women. Some are also a combination of ugly/awkward socially or want a more traditional wife that is easier to deal with. There are some other reasons, but that is the gist of it.

[momopi]

There will be a day when Taiwanese women will be marrying guys in Mainland China with higher socioeconomic status.

[kai1275]

There will be a day when Taiwanese women will be marrying guys in Mainland China with higher socioeconomic status.

HAHA! Maybe. Can you beat or hit your wife in Taiwan and get away with it? I'm asking because if they hope to do that someday, that is one thing those women better check on first or get an unpleasant surprise!

[Taco]

Country of Origin / Number of foreign spouses in TW
==================================
PRC / 285,158
HK & Macao / 12,079
Vietnam / 84,246
Indonesia / 26,980
Thailand / 7,970
Philippines / 6,888
Cambodia / 4,306
Japan / 3,270
Korea / 1,037
Other / 12,282

Total: 444,216

Its no surprise to see Korean women come in dead last, I do not get a good vibe from them at all. However, I am surprised to see HK women, Indonesia women and Thai women beat out Filipinas.

[Repatriate]

Country of Origin / Number of foreign spouses in TW
==================================
PRC / 285,158
HK & Macao / 12,079
Vietnam / 84,246
Indonesia / 26,980
Thailand / 7,970
Philippines / 6,888
Cambodia / 4,306
Japan / 3,270
Korea / 1,037
Other / 12,282

Total: 444,216

Its no surprise to see Korean women come in dead last, I do not get a good vibe from them at all. However, I am surprised to see HK women, Indonesia women and Thai women beat out Filipinas.

I can tell you with certainty that Korean women are some of the most difficult women out of any ethnicity. It's a shame because many of them are hot but they lack sensuality and a soul.

I understand why most TW men don't go for Filipinas..they are too western in behavior and speech. Viets and Chinese-Indos have a culture that has the most similarities with Taiwan.