Taiwan General Information

GENERAL INFORMATION OF TAIWAN

Overview: Taiwan is in the East China sea: there exist Okinawa islands in the North, deep Pacific ocean in the East, China continent in the West, and Phillipines in the South. Taiwan had been occupied by Holland in Great Voyage Era as a strategical base of with-Japan and with-China trade. However, after then, exhiled minister of Ming, Tei ChengGong had made the Holland retreat, and placed his versus-Qing base in Taiwan. But finally Tei family was exterminated by Qing; and, Taiwan became an area under direct control of Qing emperor. Later in the history, Taiwan became a colony of Japan after the Japan-China war. And after the WWII of Japanese defeat, Taiwan had come back to China again. Nonetheless, because of the retrieval of National Party to Taiwan by defeat in the second National-Communist Party War; Taiwan--even though it still was a part of China--has been to have another political system. Recently, Taiwan has just finished the first national vote of President election---it is moving to Democracy. Since it also achieves high economical growth, currently is getting attention of the world.

National anthem

Official name

Republic of China

Form of government

Republic/unicameral Legislative Yuan and unicameral National Assembly

Area(1000 spuare km)

Population(thousands,1993)

20949

Population density(people/1 spuare km,1993)

582

Average life span(male/female)(1995)

72.17/78.93

Birth rate(per 1000people,1995)

15.33

Death rate(per 1000people,1995)

5.71

Offical languages

Mandarin Chinese

Religions

mixture of Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist 93%, Christian 4.5%,other 2.5%

Capital

Taipei

GNP(billion US dollars)

226.267

per capita GNP(US dollars)

10826

GDP(billion US dollars)

222.629

per capita GDP(US dollars)

10652

Foreign-exchange reserves(million US dollars,1993)

84228

Growth rate(1993)

6.0%

Export(million US dollars,1993)

84917

Import(million US dollars,1993)

77061