Rate of ‘New Children of Taiwan’ on the decline

The number of what are known popularly as “New Children of Taiwan” has come down by nearly a third over the last seven years.

Taiwan sees only one out of every 10 childbirths by a mother coming from China, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines or elsewhere this year.

Statistics compiled by the Ministry of the Interior show 30,348 babies were born by foreign mothers in 2003. The number came down to 17,160 as of the end of October.

There will be at most 20,000 such children born by the end of 2007.

Reasons for the drop in the population of offspring of intermarriages abound. For one thing, foreign spouses who number well over 300,000 did not want to bear children. “I don’t want babies,” says a 25-old-year Chinese bride, who has lived with her husband in Taiwan for five years.

Born in Szechwan, the young woman came to Taipei in 2002. “I have no child, and have no plan to have one, though I may have permanent residence in one year’s time,” she adds.

“Call me Hui-chi,” she continues and tells why she doesn’t want children. “We are so hard pressed,” she says.

Many spouses from China and Southeast Asia live from hand to mouth like Hui-chi. They cannot afford to have children in Taiwan, where it costs dearly to bring them up. A 40-year-old spouse from Vietnam has lived in Taiwan for a dozen years. She admits: “I’m getting too old to have a baby, although I haven’t any.”

Another Vietnamese spouse, who identifies herself as Nguyen, has a son who is a fourth grader. She doesn’t want another child. Nguyen works as a volunteer at a local hospital.

“Only a couple of years ago,” Nguyen says, “I saw two or three foreign spouses come to hospital for checkups on pregnancy every day.”

She can hardly see a baby-carrying foreign spouse a day nowadays.

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