Transnational divorces in Taiwan decline

Couples comprising a Taiwanese partner and a foreign national accounted for about 20 percent of the total number of divorces in Taiwan last year, according to data from the Directorate General of Budget Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS).
Statistics show that an annual increase of 0.5 percent in the overall number of divorces in Taiwan last year has led to a total of 53,000 divorces.
Among those, 11,000 involved a Taiwanese citizen and a foreign national, representing a 3.3 percent decline from 2014, according to the statistics.
DGBAS said that around 10,000 of all transnational marriages that ended in divorce in 2015 involved a Taiwanese man and a foreign spouse, with 62 percent of the women being Chinese citizens, including from Hong Kong and Macau.
However, in the succeeding years since the record high, transnational couples have accounted for a small percentage of the overall divorces in Taiwan.
The agency reported that in 37 percent of cases, the female partner originated from a Southeast Asian country.
The data also shows a 3.4 percent annual increase in the number of marriages recorded in Taiwan last year, totaling 154,000 marriages of which 20,000 were transnational marriages involving a Taiwanese citizen, up by 1.5 percent from 2014. Staff reporter