SOCIETY-TAIWAN: Foreign Brides Reflect Changing Demographics

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Antoaneta Bezlova

TAIPEI, Apr 14 2004 (IPS) - Taiwan’s ambitious drive to modernise and be the envy of its Asian neighbours is producing at least one unforeseen social result – the rapid ethnic remake of this once almost-homogenous society as more migrants and foreign brides come in.

This remake is the product of demographic changes over recent decades. For instance, as affluence and social freedom give Taiwanese women greater economic independence and leeway in decisions like marriage, many bachelors have found their quests for love unrequited.

Increasingly too, Taiwanese men – frustrated in their attempts to find wives at home – choose to marry brides from elsewhere in South-east Asia. These marriages have given birth to mixed-ethnicity children.

The phenomenon of Taiwanese men marrying foreign brides has grown so quickly that the number of foreign wives now – some 300,000 from South-east Asia and mainland China – approaches the number of non-ethnic Han Aborigines, who have lived on the island for centuries.

About 12 percent or one in eight children born every year in Taiwan is a child of a foreign bride, official statistics show.

"Young Taiwanese women simply don’t like to do house chores and raise children," observes Wang Hsiao-Ying, a naturalised Taiwanese from Burma and mother of a 20-year-old daughter.

It is the men who lack confidence, argues Yadrung Chiou, a Thai woman who married a clerk from Taipei. "I was surprised to find out how little confidence he had in making any decisions. Men here live with their parents and this makes them dependent on parents’ judgement in almost everything."

Jung Hsi Hung from Indonesia agrees: "My husband married at 40 because for years, he worried that the wife he chooses won’t get along with his mother. In the end, he let his mother choose his wife for him."

While the growing number of mixed marriages is only now becoming the focus of attention by demographers and politicians, the phenomenon has had a long history.

Its social roots go back to the 1960s when Taiwan embarked on a course of rapid industrialisation. Droves of migrants moved to the cities in search of jobs, leaving only the most poorly educated and unskilled peasants in the villages.

The trend of uneven development accelerated in the 1980s when the economy hollowed out. Numerous labour-intensive industries were transferred to South-east Asia and mainland China. Unemployment soared and people from many walks of life began to fear for their security.

The social upheaval left men from the low-income bracket – blue-collar workers and peasants in lacklustre jobs – scrambling to find brides. In the face of Taiwan’s modernisation, Taiwanese women have benefited from high education, rising incomes and urban lifestyles that allowed for more freedom in deciding whether or not to tie the knot.

The retreat of Taiwanese women from the marriage scene has aided the arrival of many South-east Asian brides. The first wave of foreign brides arrived from the Philippines around the eighties, followed by those from Indonesia and Thailand. Recent years have seen a growing number of Vietnamese brides as well.

Given the demand for brides, matchmaking agencies have proliferated, charging fees of up to 350,000 New Taiwan Dollars (10,000 dollars) to arrange a marriage. Led by marriage brokers, thousands of Taiwanese peasants and working class men have flown to Indonesia, Philippines and other countries in the region to search for brides.

Matchmaking meetings are often arranged in hotels where dozens of young women, mostly aged from 16 to 30, are persuaded to parade as models until the suitors find the ‘right’ one.

With little and often lower levels of education than their prospective Taiwanese husbands, these young women are regarded as readily available foreign labourers who arrive on the island, expecting little apart from being able to earn some money to send back home.

"Foreign brides have so little rights, especially in the beginning, that Taiwanese men don’t need to worry that their wives may run away or divorce and take the children," points out Yadrung Chiou.

Many foreign women are indeed economic immigrants, drawn to Taiwan by the prospect of having better lives, according to those who work with migrants here. Others arrive on the island to be with their husbands or to escape problems back home.

"I was 30 when I came to Taiwan and was considered an old maid at home," says Jung Hsi Hung, who arrived from North Sumatra in Indonesia. " I wouldn’t have got a husband if I had stayed in my hometown Medan. When a friend who had already married in Taiwan wrote to me and offered to arrange a marriage, I was glad to accept."

By contrast, Yadrung Chiou did not have a pre-arranged marriage. A petite and pretty Thai woman from Pattaya, she met her husband during his regular business trips to Thailand. "We married and I had to follow him here," she says. "This is how I was brought up – to believe that the wife should always follow her husband."

At the same time, the arrival of more and more women from different cultural backgrounds is presenting a challenge to the inhabitants of this island of 23 million people, where 98 percent of the population are ethnic Chinese with similar customs, language and religious beliefs. "To understand the challenge, one has to understand our mentality," says Huang Su-eng, a social worker who has been helping foreign brides overcome various bureaucratic hurdles. "Taiwan is an island, an isolated land where people have got used to look at the outside world from the distance of seas and oceans that separate us."

More often than not, foreign wives in Taiwan also face social prejudice. As many of the mixed marriages are arranged by marriage brokers, foreign brides are seen as sexual commodities even by their husbands. Even if they master the language, numerous invisible barriers make them feel like permanent outsiders.

Wang Hsiao-Ying, a short and stocky Burmese woman in her forties, is a typical example. Her husband, 40 years her senior, married her through a matchmaking agency. At the time, she was already in Taiwan, having crossed the Burmese border into Thailand, managed to acquire a fake Thai passport and arrive on the island to look for job and security.

"Even now after 20 years in Taiwan, I’m still called the ‘Taipei bride’," she says. "There is a group of us – about 50 women or so who escaped poverty from different Asian countries and came to Taiwan to marry and stay. All of us, the Taipei brides, still have no citizenship rights."

"Social discrimination against these women is unfair, considering not only their efforts to learn and integrate but also what their growing numbers contribute to the local economy," says Hsia Hsiao-chuan, a board member of the Awakening Foundation, a local association formed to help foreign spouses cope with the difficulties of living in Taiwan.

A lot needs to be done to eliminate the social stigma attached to foreign brides, Hsia adds. "There is no reason for discrimination against these women. Instead, we should learn to see them in a different light. Taiwan is a rapidly greying society and these women and their children can help us deal with this problem."