125-908: The Hai Kun -class submarine ( Chinese : 海鯤級潛艦 , translation " Narwhal "), alternatively known as the Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS) program, is a class of attack submarines built by CSBC Corporation, Taiwan for the Republic of China Navy . While the Hai Kun class is thought to be based on the Dutch Zwaardvis class , which is currently operated by Taiwan , the design has been brought up to date by incorporating many new and more modern systems. Since 2001, Taiwan has been attempting to procure new submarines to bolster its aging underwater fleets, which consisted of two Dutch-built Hai Lung -class submarines from
250-469: A nucleus that has a vowel (which can be a monophthong , diphthong , or even a triphthong in certain varieties), preceded by an onset (a single consonant , or consonant + glide ; a zero onset is also possible), and followed (optionally) by a coda consonant; a syllable also carries a tone . There are some instances where a vowel is not used as a nucleus. An example of this is in Cantonese, where
375-496: A seismic activity area (Taiwan is in a region of the world very prone to large earthquakes and tsunamis) like what happened at Fukushima in Japan in 2011 influenced Tsai and her party to make Taiwan nuclear power-free by 2025. While the nuclear energy referendum guaranteed that nuclear energy would not be abolished in 2018 Tsai decided to not renew the three remaining nuclear power plants' licenses which would expire after 40 years. Of
500-457: A subject–verb–object word order , and like many other languages of East Asia, makes frequent use of the topic–comment construction to form sentences. Chinese also has an extensive system of classifiers and measure words , another trait shared with neighboring languages such as Japanese and Korean. Other notable grammatical features common to all the spoken varieties of Chinese include the use of serial verb construction , pronoun dropping , and
625-510: A Chinese character is the morpheme, as characters represent the smallest grammatical units with individual meanings in the Chinese language. Estimates of the total number of Chinese words and lexicalized phrases vary greatly. The Hanyu Da Zidian , a compendium of Chinese characters, includes 54,678 head entries for characters, including oracle bone versions. The Zhonghua Zihai (1994) contains 85,568 head entries for character definitions and
750-412: A January 2019 speech by stating that Taiwan rejects "one country, two systems" and that because Beijing equates the 1992 Consensus with "one country, two systems", Taiwan rejects the 1992 Consensus as well. During her second inauguration speech, Tsai rejected one country, two systems explicitly again and reaffirmed her previous stance that cross-strait exchanges should be held on the basis of parity between
875-599: A Shanghai resident may speak both Standard Chinese and Shanghainese ; if they grew up elsewhere, they are also likely fluent in the dialect of their home region. In addition to Standard Chinese, a majority of Taiwanese people also speak Taiwanese Hokkien (also called 台語 ; 'Taiwanese' ), Hakka , or an Austronesian language . A speaker in Taiwan may mix pronunciations and vocabulary from Standard Chinese and other languages of Taiwan in everyday speech. In part due to traditional cultural ties with Guangdong , Cantonese
1000-462: A central variety (i.e. prestige variety, such as Standard Mandarin), as the issue requires some careful handling when mutual intelligibility is inconsistent with language identity. The Chinese government's official Chinese designation for the major branches of Chinese is 方言 ; fāngyán ; 'regional speech', whereas the more closely related varieties within these are called 地点方言 ; 地點方言 ; dìdiǎn fāngyán ; 'local speech'. Because of
1125-560: A compromise between the pronunciations of different regions. The royal courts of the Ming and early Qing dynasties operated using a koiné language known as Guanhua , based on the Nanjing dialect of Mandarin. Standard Chinese is an official language of both the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan), one of the four official languages of Singapore , and one of
1250-404: A contract with CSBC. In February 2024 it was reported that the Hai Kun is set to undergo a crucial phase of its harbor acceptance tests. Chinese language Chinese ( simplified Chinese : 汉语 ; traditional Chinese : 漢語 ; pinyin : Hànyǔ ; lit. ' Han language' or 中文 ; Zhōngwén ; 'Chinese writing') is a group of languages spoken natively by
1375-714: A corresponding increase in the number of homophones . As an example, the small Langenscheidt Pocket Chinese Dictionary lists six words that are commonly pronounced as shí in Standard Chinese: In modern spoken Mandarin, however, tremendous ambiguity would result if all of these words could be used as-is. The 20th century Yuen Ren Chao poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den exploits this, consisting of 92 characters all pronounced shi . As such, most of these words have been replaced in speech, if not in writing, with less ambiguous disyllabic compounds. Only
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#17327937662781500-458: A focus on asymmetric warfare , maintenance of a military reserve force , and reform in management to reflect a democratic society. On cross-strait issues, she explicitly rejected the one country, two systems model proposed by Beijing and expressed a desire for both sides to coexist peacefully. Under the Tsai administration, military spending has risen in Taiwan relative to GDP. The defense budget
1625-517: A human rights commission under the Control Yuan . She also outlined her economic policy, which included transitioning from manufacturing to high-tech industries, with a focus on existing semiconductor and information and communications technology industries, cybersecurity , biotechnology and healthcare , domestic production of military equipment, green energy and strategically-critical industries. She proposed goals for defense reform, including
1750-492: A law professor at Soochow University School of Law and National Chengchi University after earning an LLB from National Taiwan University and an LLM from Cornell Law School . She later studied law at the London School of Economics and was awarded a PhD . In 1993, as an independent (without party affiliation), she was appointed to a series of governmental positions, including trade negotiator for WTO affairs, by
1875-517: A major defeat in local elections . Tsai resumed the Democratic Progressive Party leadership from Cho Jung-tai on 20 May 2020, when she was inaugurated for her second presidential term. She resigned as party leader following the 2022 Taiwanese local elections . On 11 March 2011, Tsai Ing-wen officially announced her run for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Progressive Party. On 27 April 2011, Tsai became
2000-450: A major party as a presidential candidate in the history of Taiwan after defeating her former superior, Su Tseng-chang, in the DPP's primary election by a slight margin. In the 2012 Taiwanese presidential election , she was defeated by the then-president Ma Ying-jeou , but she won her first term of presidency in the 2016 presidential election by a landslide in a rematch against Eric Chu. In
2125-576: A millennium. The Four Commanderies of Han were established in northern Korea in the 1st century BCE but disintegrated in the following centuries. Chinese Buddhism spread over East Asia between the 2nd and 5th centuries CE, and with it the study of scriptures and literature in Literary Chinese. Later, strong central governments modeled on Chinese institutions were established in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, with Literary Chinese serving as
2250-542: A secure reconstruction of Proto-Sino-Tibetan, the higher-level structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, but has not been convincingly demonstrated. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty . As the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have repeatedly sought to promulgate
2375-508: A similar way to the use of Latin and Ancient Greek roots in European languages. Many new compounds, or new meanings for old phrases, were created in the late 19th and early 20th centuries to name Western concepts and artifacts. These coinages, written in shared Chinese characters, have then been borrowed freely between languages. They have even been accepted into Chinese, a language usually resistant to loanwords, because their foreign origin
2500-678: A single language. However, their lack of mutual intelligibility means they are sometimes considered to be separate languages in a family . Investigation of the historical relationships among the varieties of Chinese is ongoing. Currently, most classifications posit 7 to 13 main regional groups based on phonetic developments from Middle Chinese , of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin with 66%, or around 800 million speakers, followed by Min (75 million, e.g. Southern Min ), Wu (74 million, e.g. Shanghainese ), and Yue (68 million, e.g. Cantonese ). These branches are unintelligible to each other, and many of their subgroups are unintelligible with
2625-631: A unified standard. The earliest examples of Old Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones dated to c. 1250 BCE , during the Late Shang . The next attested stage came from inscriptions on bronze artifacts dating to the Western Zhou period (1046–771 BCE), the Classic of Poetry and portions of the Book of Documents and I Ching . Scholars have attempted to reconstruct
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#17327937662782750-575: A variety of Yue from a small coastal area around Taishan, Guangdong . In parts of South China, the dialect of a major city may be only marginally intelligible to its neighbors. For example, Wuzhou and Taishan are located approximately 260 km (160 mi) and 190 km (120 mi) away from Guangzhou respectively, but the Yue variety spoken in Wuzhou is more similar to the Guangzhou dialect than
2875-602: Is Taishanese. Wuzhou is located directly upstream from Guangzhou on the Pearl River , whereas Taishan is to Guangzhou's southwest, with the two cities separated by several river valleys. In parts of Fujian , the speech of some neighbouring counties or villages is mutually unintelligible. Local varieties of Chinese are conventionally classified into seven dialect groups, largely based on the different evolution of Middle Chinese voiced initials: Proportions of first-language speakers The classification of Li Rong , which
3000-466: Is Taiwan, Taiwan is the ROC, and the current ROC government is no longer ruled by a non-native political power". Tsai resigned as chair of the DPP after losing her 2012 presidential election bid to incumbent Ma Ying-jeou. On 15 March 2014, Tsai announced that she would once more run for party chief of the DPP against incumbent Su Tseng-chang and Frank Hsieh . However, both Su and Hsieh dropped out of
3125-608: Is a Taiwanese politician who served as the 7th president of the Republic of China ( Taiwan ) from 2016 to 2024, and was the first woman to hold that position. A member of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), she intermittently served as chair of the DPP from 2008 to 2012, 2014 to 2018, and 2020 to 2022. Tsai was born and raised in Taipei and studied law and international trade , and later became
3250-525: Is believed to have provided technical support. The design of the Hai Kun class is thought to be derived from the Dutch Zwaardvis class , which is currently operated by Taiwan , with some similarities to the Dutch Walrus class as well. The submarine features a hybrid double-single hull structure with a light outer hull, but replaces the cruciform control surfaces of the Zwaardvis class with
3375-490: Is called either 华语 ; 華語 ; Huáyǔ or 汉语 ; 漢語 ; Hànyǔ ). Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. The governments of both China and Taiwan intend for speakers of all Chinese speech varieties to use it as a common language of communication. Therefore, it is used in government agencies, in the media, and as a language of instruction in schools. Diglossia is common among Chinese speakers. For example,
3500-603: Is often described as a 'monosyllabic' language. However, this is only partially correct. It is largely accurate when describing Old and Middle Chinese; in Classical Chinese, around 90% of words consist of a single character that corresponds one-to-one with a morpheme , the smallest unit of meaning in a language. In modern varieties, it usually remains the case that morphemes are monosyllabic—in contrast, English has many multi-syllable morphemes, both bound and free , such as 'seven', 'elephant', 'para-' and '-able'. Some of
3625-445: Is only about an eighth as many as English. All varieties of spoken Chinese use tones to distinguish words. A few dialects of north China may have as few as three tones, while some dialects in south China have up to 6 or 12 tones, depending on how one counts. One exception from this is Shanghainese which has reduced the set of tones to a two-toned pitch accent system much like modern Japanese. A very common example used to illustrate
3750-533: Is slated to begin operations at the end of 2019. The government also purchased 520 MW of solar capacity in 2017 and more than 1 GW in 2018; total capacity was 2.8 GW at the end of 2018, with the government planning to deploy an addition 1.5 GW of solar power in 2019 and 2.2 GW in 2020. On May 30, 2023, the Renewable Energy Development Act was amended to require solar panels on all new buildings. The government approved amendments to
3875-668: Is specifically meant. However, when one of the above words forms part of a compound, the disambiguating syllable is generally dropped and the resulting word is still disyllabic. For example, 石 ; shí alone, and not 石头 ; 石頭 ; shítou , appears in compounds as meaning 'stone' such as 石膏 ; shígāo ; 'plaster', 石灰 ; shíhuī ; 'lime', 石窟 ; shíkū ; 'grotto', 石英 ; 'quartz', and 石油 ; shíyóu ; 'petroleum'. Although many single-syllable morphemes ( 字 ; zì ) can stand alone as individual words, they more often than not form multi-syllable compounds known as 词 ; 詞 ; cí , which more closely resembles
Hai Kun-class submarine - Misplaced Pages Continue
4000-489: Is the largest reference work based purely on character and its literary variants. The CC-CEDICT project (2010) contains 97,404 contemporary entries including idioms, technology terms, and names of political figures, businesses, and products. The 2009 version of the Webster's Digital Chinese Dictionary (WDCD), based on CC-CEDICT, contains over 84,000 entries. The most comprehensive pure linguistic Chinese-language dictionary,
4125-501: Is used as an everyday language in Hong Kong and Macau . The designation of various Chinese branches remains controversial. Some linguists and most ordinary Chinese people consider all the spoken varieties as one single language, as speakers share a common national identity and a common written form. Others instead argue that it is inappropriate to refer to major branches of Chinese such as Mandarin, Wu, and so on as "dialects" because
4250-500: Is used in education, media, formal speech, and everyday life—though Mandarin is increasingly taught in schools due to the mainland's growing influence. Historically, the Chinese language has spread to its neighbors through a variety of means. Northern Vietnam was incorporated into the Han dynasty (202 BCE – 220 CE) in 111 BCE, marking the beginning of a period of Chinese control that ran almost continuously for
4375-552: Is used in the Language Atlas of China (1987), distinguishes three further groups: Some varieties remain unclassified, including the Danzhou dialect on Hainan , Waxianghua spoken in western Hunan , and Shaozhou Tuhua spoken in northern Guangdong . Standard Chinese is the standard language of China (where it is called 普通话 ; pǔtōnghuà ) and Taiwan, and one of the four official languages of Singapore (where it
4500-428: Is very complex, with a large number of consonants and vowels, but they are probably not all distinguished in any single dialect. Most linguists now believe it represents a diasystem encompassing 6th-century northern and southern standards for reading the classics. The complex relationship between spoken and written Chinese is an example of diglossia : as spoken, Chinese varieties have evolved at different rates, while
4625-753: The Qieyun rime dictionary (601 CE), and a late period in the 10th century, reflected by rhyme tables such as the Yunjing constructed by ancient Chinese philologists as a guide to the Qieyun system. These works define phonological categories but with little hint of what sounds they represent. Linguists have identified these sounds by comparing the categories with pronunciations in modern varieties of Chinese , borrowed Chinese words in Japanese, Vietnamese, and Korean, and transcription evidence. The resulting system
4750-546: The 1992 Summit took place but does not agree that a "consensus" was ever reached by both sides. She credited the talks with spurring 20 years of dialogue and exchange between the two sides. She hoped that exchanges would continue on the basis of these historical facts, as well as the existence of the Republic of China constitutional system and democratic will of the Taiwanese people. In response, Beijing called Tsai's answer an "incomplete test paper" because Tsai did not agree to
4875-662: The 2020 presidential election , she was re-elected as president after winning the election against Han Kuo-yu . Her presidency is succeeded by Lai Ching-te of the DPP on 20 May 2024. Tsai is the second president from the DPP, and also the first popularly elected president to have never served as the Mayor of Taipei . She resigned as head of the Democratic People's Party (DPP) in November 2022, citing her party's poor performance in local elections earlier that month. Tsai
5000-731: The Consumer Protection Commission . On 17 May 2007, Tsai, along with the rest of the cabinet of out-going Premier Su Tseng-chang , resigned to make way for incoming Premier Chang Chun-hsiung and his cabinet. Premier Chang named Chiou I-jen , the incumbent secretary-general of the Presidential Office to replace Tsai as vice premier. She then served as the chair of TaiMedBiologics, a biotechnology company based in Taiwan. The Kuomintang accused Tsai of contracting government work out to TaiMedBiologics during her term as vice premier, while planning to leave
5125-648: The Dominican Republic , Burkina Faso and El Salvador in 2018, and the Solomon Islands and Kiribati in 2019, and Nicaragua in 2021, and Honduras in 2023, and Nauru in 2024. This continued a trend that was temporarily halted under an unofficial "diplomatic truce" during the Ma Ying-jeou administration where the PRC ceased to court official diplomatic allies of the ROC. At the same time,
Hai Kun-class submarine - Misplaced Pages Continue
5250-473: The Hai Lung -class's Hai Hu (SS-794) would not accommodate the planned eight boats. After launch harbor acceptance trials will start on 1 October 2023 and preliminary evaluations are expected to be completed by 1 April 2024. Following the launch, Kuomintang politician Ma Wen-chun was publicly accused of attempting to hinder Taiwan's domestic submarine program through outing foreign individuals involved in
5375-533: The Korean , Japanese and Vietnamese languages, and today comprise over half of their vocabularies. This massive influx led to changes in the phonological structure of the languages, contributing to the development of moraic structure in Japanese and the disruption of vowel harmony in Korean. Borrowed Chinese morphemes have been used extensively in all these languages to coin compound words for new concepts, in
5500-710: The May Fourth Movement beginning in 1919. After the fall of the Northern Song dynasty and subsequent reign of the Jurchen Jin and Mongol Yuan dynasties in northern China, a common speech (now called Old Mandarin ) developed based on the dialects of the North China Plain around the capital. The 1324 Zhongyuan Yinyun was a dictionary that codified the rhyming conventions of new sanqu verse form in this language. Together with
5625-595: The National Language Unification Commission finally settled on the Beijing dialect in 1932. The People's Republic founded in 1949 retained this standard but renamed it 普通话 ; 普通話 ; pǔtōnghuà ; 'common speech'. The national language is now used in education, the media, and formal situations in both mainland China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong and Macau , Cantonese is the dominant spoken language due to cultural influence from Guangdong immigrants and colonial-era policies, and
5750-483: The New Southbound Policy as well as prioritization of innovative industries. In terms of cross-strait policy, she acknowledged the 1992 Consensus without agreeing to it and called for continued cross-strait dialogue. In her second inauguration speech, Tsai outlined her major goals in her second term, including instituting a lay judge system, lowering the voting age from 20 to 18, and establishing
5875-469: The cabinet 's mass resignation in 2007. Following the DPP's defeat in the presidential election in 2008 , she was elected as party chair of the DPP, but she resigned when the party lost the presidential election in 2012 . Tsai ran for New Taipei City mayorship in the 2010 municipal elections but was defeated by the KMT candidate, Eric Chu . In April 2011, Tsai became the first woman to be nominated by
6000-632: The election for DPP chair , and succeeded outgoing Frank Hsieh as the 12th-term chair of the party. She was the first woman to chair a major Taiwanese political party. Tsai took office on 20 May 2008, the same day Ma Ying-jeou was inaugurated as president. She said that DPP would work to deepen the Taiwanese localization movement while defending social justice. She criticized Ma for mentioning closer Cross-Strait relations but nothing about Taiwan's sovereignty and national security. Tsai questioned Ma's stance on Taiwan's sovereign status. Ma emphasized
6125-478: The oracle bone inscriptions created during the Shang dynasty c. 1250 BCE . The phonetic categories of Old Chinese can be reconstructed from the rhymes of ancient poetry. During the Northern and Southern period , Middle Chinese went through several sound changes and split into several varieties following prolonged geographic and political separation. The Qieyun , a rime dictionary , recorded
6250-596: The phonology of Old Chinese by comparing later varieties of Chinese with the rhyming practice of the Classic of Poetry and the phonetic elements found in the majority of Chinese characters. Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differs from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe an atonal language with consonant clusters at
6375-681: The 12-volume Hanyu Da Cidian , records more than 23,000 head Chinese characters and gives over 370,000 definitions. The 1999 revised Cihai , a multi-volume encyclopedic dictionary reference work, gives 122,836 vocabulary entry definitions under 19,485 Chinese characters, including proper names, phrases, and common zoological, geographical, sociological, scientific, and technical terms. The 2016 edition of Xiandai Hanyu Cidian , an authoritative one-volume dictionary on modern standard Chinese language as used in mainland China, has 13,000 head characters and defines 70,000 words. Tsai Ing-wen Tsai Ing-wen ( Chinese : 蔡英文 ; born 31 August 1956)
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#17327937662786500-519: The 1980s and two US-built GUPPY-class submarines that saw action in the Second World War . In 2003, the US offered to provide the subs for Taiwan, but as the US has not been building diesel-powered submarines since the 1950s, and after an offer of eight refurbished Italian Nazario Sauro -class submarines was declined by Taiwan due to their age, the attempt to acquire foreign-built submarines
6625-877: The 1990s, Tsai was also appointed to the Fair Trade Commission and the Copyright Commission. She served as consultant for the Mainland Affairs Council and the National Security Council . She also led the drafting team on the Statute Governing Relations with Hong Kong and Macau ( Chinese : 港澳關係條例 ). In 2000, Tsai was given the high-profile appointment of chair of the Mainland Affairs Council. Confirming
6750-552: The DPP regained momentum in elections of 2009, after major defeats from 2006 to 2008. In 2010, she was re-elected as the chair of the DPP. Tsai made a controversial statement in May 2010 claiming that the Republic of China was a " government-in-exile " non-native to Taiwan; however on 8 October 2011, two days prior to the 100-year anniversary celebrations of the Double Ten Day , Tsai changed her statement, stating that "The ROC
6875-470: The Electricity Act on 20 October 2016 to break up the state-owned monopoly Taipower into subsidiaries and further liberalize the power sector by allowing companies to sell electricity to users directly rather than selling through Taipower. In particular, the generation and distribution divisions of Taipower are to be separated. Amongst the stated motivations for liberalisation was to allow for
7000-419: The Electricity Act. An energy blackout due to an unrelated operational mistake have led some to question the nuclear phase-out. According to the results of the 2018 referendum , this provision was abolished on 7 May 2019. Nonetheless, the administration has maintained a goal of phasing out nuclear energy. The controversial nuclear waste site on Orchid Island and the dangers of nuclear power plants in
7125-565: The Latin-based Vietnamese alphabet . English words of Chinese origin include tea from Hokkien 茶 ( tê ), dim sum from Cantonese 點心 ( dim2 sam1 ), and kumquat from Cantonese 金橘 ( gam1 gwat1 ). The sinologist Jerry Norman has estimated that there are hundreds of mutually unintelligible varieties of Chinese. These varieties form a dialect continuum , in which differences in speech generally become more pronounced as distances increase, though
7250-599: The People's Republic of China . She insisted "the two sides (The ROC and PRC) of the Taiwan Strait do not belong to each other" (海峽兩岸互不隸屬). The Tsai administration oversaw Taiwan's response to the COVID-19 pandemic . The Central Epidemic Command Center was activated on January 20, 2020, and deactivated May 1, 2023. On August 28, 2020, the Tsai administration lifted a ban on leaning agent ractopamine , clearing
7375-707: The Tsai administration saw breakthroughs in Taiwan's unofficial relations with the United States and the European Union. On 9 August 2020, the United States Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar of the Trump administration became the highest-level Cabinet member to visit Taiwan since the diplomatic break between the ROC and the United States in 1979. In April 2021, the United States ambassador to Palau made an official visit to Taiwan,
7500-580: The United States Department of State approved the sale of 18 MK-48 Mod6 Advanced Technology Heavy Weight Torpedoes and related equipment to Taiwan for an estimated cost of $ 180 million. In November 2020, President Tsai Ing-wen opened the submarine construction facility in Kaohsiung (not Keelung) with plans to build eight submarines. Construction was to begin with a prototype boat which was to be built over 78 months. Anticipated delivery
7625-521: The aging ROCN Hsu Hai (formerly the USS Pensacola ). On 11 March 2022, a special force soldier wrote to Tsai, reporting that insufficient supply and logistical planning compelled combatants to purchase equipment from outside suppliers at their own expense for two years. Such equipment was subsequently disqualified as non-standard upon inspection, in contrast of the reserve trainees receiving new sets of equipment. The soldier also appealed to abolish
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#17327937662787750-619: The behest of her father. After graduating at the College of Law, National Taiwan University , in 1978, Tsai obtained a Master of Laws at Cornell Law School in 1980. She then studied law at the London School of Economics and was awarded a Ph.D. in law from the University of London in 1984. Upon her return to Taiwan, she taught law at the School of Law of Soochow University and National Chengchi University , both in Taipei . In
7875-645: The boat features domestic content. In October 2019 it was reported that construction of the class would commence at the Heping Island yard in Keelung (Northeast Taiwan) rather than in Kaohsiung (Southwest Taiwan). Later in October 2019 it was reported that personnel working on the project were forbidden from traveling to or transiting through Macao or Hong Kong (their travel to Mainland China had already been restricted) due to security concerns. In May 2020,
8000-572: The content of the 1992 Consensus. On 25 June 2016, Beijing suspended official cross-strait communications, with any remaining cross-strait exchanges thereafter taking place through unofficial channels. In January 2019, Xi Jinping , the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), wrote an open letter to Taiwan, proposing a one country, two systems formula for eventual unification. Tsai responded to Xi in
8125-399: The different spoken dialects varies, but in general, there has been a tendency to a reduction in sounds from Middle Chinese. The Mandarin dialects in particular have experienced a dramatic decrease in sounds and so have far more polysyllabic words than most other spoken varieties. The total number of syllables in some varieties is therefore only about a thousand, including tonal variation, which
8250-484: The difficulties involved in determining the difference between language and dialect, other terms have been proposed. These include topolect , lect , vernacular , regional , and variety . Syllables in the Chinese languages have some unique characteristics. They are tightly related to the morphology and also to the characters of the writing system, and phonologically they are structured according to fixed rules. The structure of each syllable consists of
8375-432: The direct purchase of green energy by consumers. The plan also included emissions controls, the creation of a regulatory agency, mandatory reserve margins (waived for start-up green energy companies), and measures for price stabilization. The plan was met with protests by Taipower employees. Tsai campaigned on a promise to make Taiwan nuclear-free by 2025, which was codified into law on 11 January 2017 via amendments to
8500-409: The election in the aftermath of the Sunflower Student Movement . Tsai defeated Kaohsiung County deputy commissioner Kuo Tai-lin by 79,676 votes. Tsai led the DPP to an historic victory in the local elections held on 29 November 2014, in which the party secured leadership of 13 of Taiwan's 22 municipalities and counties. The DPP's stunning victory in the elections strengthened Tsai's position within
8625-464: The end of the syllable, developing into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese. Several derivational affixes have also been identified, but the language lacks inflection , and indicated grammatical relationships using word order and grammatical particles . Middle Chinese was the language used during Northern and Southern dynasties and the Sui , Tang , and Song dynasties (6th–10th centuries CE). It can be divided into an early period, reflected by
8750-444: The ethnic Han Chinese majority and many minority ethnic groups in China , as well as by various communities of the Chinese diaspora . Approximately 1.35 billion people, or 17% of the global population, speak a variety of Chinese as their first language . Chinese languages form the Sinitic branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. The spoken varieties of Chinese are usually considered by native speakers to be dialects of
8875-421: The first female presidential candidate in Taiwan after she defeated former Premier Su Tseng-chang by a small margin in a nationwide phone poll (of more than 15,000 samples) that served as the party's primary. Tsai ran against incumbent President Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang and James Soong of the People First Party in the 5th direct presidential election, which was held on 14 January 2012. Garnering 45.63% of
9000-413: The first one, 十 , normally appears in monosyllabic form in spoken Mandarin; the rest are normally used in the polysyllabic forms of respectively. In each, the homophone was disambiguated by the addition of another morpheme, typically either a near-synonym or some sort of generic word (e.g. 'head', 'thing'), the purpose of which is to indicate which of the possible meanings of the other, homophonic syllable
9125-680: The first time a US ambassador had done so since the US switched recognition from the ROC to the PRC in 1979. In the same month, the United States President Joe Biden also sent an official delegation including former senator Chris Dodd to Taiwan. On November 3, 2021 the first official European Union delegation arrived in Taiwan led by French MEP Raphael Glucksmann , and consisting of Lithuanian MEPs Andrius Kubilius and Petras Auštrevičius , Czech MEP Markéta Gregorová , Austrian MEP Andreas Schieder , Greek MEP Georgios Kyrtsos and Italian MEP Marco Dreosto , with
9250-491: The form of a word), to indicate a word's function within a sentence. In other words, Chinese has very few grammatical inflections —it possesses no tenses , no voices , no grammatical number , and only a few articles . They make heavy use of grammatical particles to indicate aspect and mood . In Mandarin, this involves the use of particles such as 了 ; le ; ' PFV ', 还 ; 還 ; hái ; 'still', and 已经 ; 已經 ; yǐjīng ; 'already'. Chinese has
9375-470: The government and lead the company afterward. She was later cleared of all alleged wrongdoing. In Kuomintang candidate Ma Ying-jeou's search for his running mate for the 2008 ROC presidential election , Tsai, a DPP member, was surprisingly suggested. Ma stated that there were no set criteria for a running mate, that his search would not be defined by gender, occupation, or even political party affiliations. On 19 May 2008, Tsai defeated Koo Kwang-ming in
9500-625: The government of the People's Republic of China, with Singapore officially adopting them in 1976. Traditional characters are used in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and among Chinese-speaking communities overseas . Linguists classify all varieties of Chinese as part of the Sino-Tibetan language family , together with Burmese , Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif . Although
9625-523: The highest-profile visit since. The PRC responded with several days of military exercises around Taiwan. On March 25, 2023, an official delegation of the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic , led by Markéta Pekarová Adamová , visited Taiwan to conduct exchanges on trade, cultural, and academic exchanges. During her first inauguration speech, Tsai acknowledged that the talks surrounding
9750-432: The importance of the so-called 1992 Consensus and called Tsai a Taiwan independence extremist. Tsai criticized Ma's government for not answering her question and labeling others. After former President Chen Shui-bian's acknowledgment of transferring past campaign funds overseas, Tsai apologized to the public and also said that the DPP would not try to cover up for Chen's alleged misdeeds. The Clean Government Commission
9875-586: The language of administration and scholarship, a position it would retain until the late 19th century in Korea and (to a lesser extent) Japan, and the early 20th century in Vietnam. Scholars from different lands could communicate, albeit only in writing, using Literary Chinese. Although they used Chinese solely for written communication, each country had its own tradition of reading texts aloud using what are known as Sino-Xenic pronunciations . Chinese words with these pronunciations were also extensively imported into
10000-528: The late 19th century. Today Japanese is written with a composite script using both Chinese characters called kanji , and kana. Korean is written exclusively with hangul in North Korea, although knowledge of the supplementary Chinese characters called hanja is still required, and hanja are increasingly rarely used in South Korea. As a result of its historical colonization by France, Vietnamese now uses
10125-502: The launch date was confirmed to be 28 September 2023, and the name of the first boat and hull number were announced. The first boat will be named Hai Kun , after a mythological fish mentioned in the ancient Chinese text Zhuangzi , written during the Warring States period by Zhuang Zhou , which was described as being of an unfathomable size. The hull number was given as SS-711, as the existing numbers remaining if continued from
10250-417: The lead boat was reported to have occurred in November 2021. In mid-2022 it was reported that the launch of the first submarine remained on track for September 2023. The date for service entry was still envisaged as 2025. In November 2021 Reuters reported that Taiwan had recruited engineers and retired submariners from the US, UK, Australia, South Korea, India, Spain and Canada to work on the program and advise
10375-413: The mainland trade invasion. Tsai also said that the pact "will make Taiwan lose its independence in cross-strait relations and become a Chinese parasite" and that Taiwan should negotiate with China under the multilateral-framework World Trade Organization , which would offer more trade protections and emphasize Taiwan's distinct status. Under Tsai's leadership, along with some of KMT's unpopular policies,
10500-469: The mandatory diary writing for examination. The classified "2022006470" document was somehow illegally leaked from the presidential office to the media with his identity exposed on 18 March. In response, Minister of National Defense , Chiu Kuo-cheng stated: "I will not let him get away with it", "Fix the crying baby!" When questioned by members of the Legislative Yuan, Chiu clarified that he
10625-455: The more conservative modern varieties, usually found in the south, have largely monosyllabic words , especially with basic vocabulary. However, most nouns, adjectives, and verbs in modern Mandarin are disyllabic. A significant cause of this is phonetic erosion : sound changes over time have steadily reduced the number of possible syllables in the language's inventory. In modern Mandarin, there are only around 1,200 possible syllables, including
10750-480: The more prevalent X-form type rudders, resembling Japan's Sōryū -class and the Dutch Walrus -class SSKs. It does not feature air independent power (AIP) and is believed to lack anechoic coating. When it comes to speed, the submarine will likely reach a surface speed of 8 knots and a submerged speed of 17 knots. In addition, it has a expected range of up to 11,000 kilometers. The vessels are estimated to be in
10875-425: The mutual unintelligibility between them is too great. However, calling major Chinese branches "languages" would also be wrong under the same criterion, since a branch such as Wu, itself contains many mutually unintelligible varieties, and could not be properly called a single language. There are also viewpoints pointing out that linguists often ignore mutual intelligibility when varieties share intelligibility with
11000-583: The nasal sonorant consonants /m/ and /ŋ/ can stand alone as their own syllable. In Mandarin much more than in other spoken varieties, most syllables tend to be open syllables, meaning they have no coda (assuming that a final glide is not analyzed as a coda), but syllables that do have codas are restricted to nasals /m/ , /n/ , /ŋ/ , the retroflex approximant /ɻ/ , and voiceless stops /p/ , /t/ , /k/ , or /ʔ/ . Some varieties allow most of these codas, whereas others, such as Standard Chinese, are limited to only /n/ , /ŋ/ , and /ɻ/ . The number of sounds in
11125-519: The navy. The UK government has granted licenses to companies to export some £167 million worth of submarine technology and parts to Taiwan, more than the prior six years of investment since 2017 combined. Current and former UK officials have warned against disclosing specific information about support given to Taiwan publicly. In May 2023 CSBC Corp. announced that the prototype would undergo final tests in September of that year. On 21 September 2023,
11250-538: The other varieties within the same branch (e.g. Southern Min). There are, however, transitional areas where varieties from different branches share enough features for some limited intelligibility, including New Xiang with Southwestern Mandarin , Xuanzhou Wu Chinese with Lower Yangtze Mandarin , Jin with Central Plains Mandarin and certain divergent dialects of Hakka with Gan . All varieties of Chinese are tonal at least to some degree, and are largely analytic . The earliest attested written Chinese consists of
11375-493: The party and placed her as the front-runner in the 2016 Presidential Elections ; she announced her second bid for the Presidency on 15 February 2015. On 16 January 2016, she won the election by a landslide, winning 56.1% of votes, beating her opponent Eric Chu , who won 31.1% of the votes. On 24 November 2018, she resigned as leader of the Democratic Progressive Party and refused Premier Lai Ching-te 's resignation after
11500-557: The presidential candidate on 15 April. During summer of 2015, Tsai embarked on a visit to the United States and met a number of US policy makers including Senators John McCain and Jack Reed . In her speech addressing Taiwanese diaspora on the east coast of the United States, Tsai signaled a willingness to cooperate with the rising Third Party coalition in Taiwan in the incoming general election. On 14 November, Tsai's campaign announced that she had chosen Chen Chien-jen as DPP vice presidential candidate. On 16 January 2016, Tsai won
11625-551: The presidential election, beating her opponent Eric Chu by a margin of 25.04%. Tsai was inaugurated as president on 20 May 2016. After her election, Tsai was named one of "The 100 Most Influential People" in TIME magazine 2 May 2016 issue. Tsai announced on 19 February 2019 via an interview with CNN that she would run for reelection as president in 2020. She registered to run in the Democratic Progressive Party presidential primary on 21 March 2019. Tsai defeated Lai Ching-te in
11750-445: The primary, and the Democratic Progressive Party nominated her as its candidate for the 2020 presidential election on 19 June 2019. Tsai and Lai formed the Democratic Progressive Party ticket on 17 November 2019. In the inauguration speech for her first term, Tsai stated policy goals such as pension reform, long-term care for the elderly, transitional justice, and judicial reform. She outlined an economic policy of diversification via
11875-810: The program and through providing information on the program to the People's Republic of China. Following comments by the head of the submarine program about an unspecified legislator who had interfered with the program Ma posted on Facebook “If you name me, I’ll have to sue you” following which she was named by her legislative colleagues. According to a report by a Ma Wen-Chun to the Korean Mission in Taipei on 3 January 2024, former Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering 's submarine designers, who are under investigation by South Korean police for leaking design drawings of Korean DSME-1400 submarines to Taiwan, are participating in submarine development after signing
12000-418: The purpose of conducting exchanges on disinformation and cyber attacks against democracies. The visit followed an official tour of Central Europe by foreign minister Joseph Wu which included an unofficial visit to Brussels . On August 2, 2022, U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan with a delegation of 6 Democratic representatives , the first since a visit by Newt Gingrich in 1997, and
12125-404: The rate of change varies immensely. Generally, mountainous South China exhibits more linguistic diversity than the North China Plain . Until the late 20th century, Chinese emigrants to Southeast Asia and North America came from southeast coastal areas, where Min, Hakka, and Yue dialects were spoken. Specifically, most Chinese immigrants to North America until the mid-20th century spoke Taishanese ,
12250-552: The related subject dropping . Although the grammars of the spoken varieties share many traits, they do possess differences. The entire Chinese character corpus since antiquity comprises well over 50,000 characters, of which only roughly 10,000 are in use and only about 3,000 are frequently used in Chinese media and newspapers. However, Chinese characters should not be confused with Chinese words. Because most Chinese words are made up of two or more characters, there are many more Chinese words than characters. A more accurate equivalent for
12375-509: The relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austroasiatic . Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact. In addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach and are often also sensitive border zones. Without
12500-430: The same combat gear as active servicemembers and synchronization of mobilization. The first domestically-produced rapid mine-laying ship was delivered on 4 August 2020, and construction on an indigenous diesel submarine began in November 2020. The navy's first indigenous amphibious transport dock was launched on April 13, 2021; named Yu Shan after the mountain with the same name and built by CSBC , it will replace
12625-517: The six official languages of the United Nations . Standard Chinese is based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin and was first officially adopted in the 1930s. The language is written primarily using a logography of Chinese characters , largely shared by readers who may otherwise speak mutually unintelligible varieties. Since the 1950s, the use of simplified characters has been promoted by
12750-561: The slightly later Menggu Ziyun , this dictionary describes a language with many of the features characteristic of modern Mandarin dialects. Up to the early 20th century, most Chinese people only spoke their local variety. Thus, as a practical measure, officials of the Ming and Qing dynasties carried out the administration of the empire using a common language based on Mandarin varieties , known as 官话 ; 官話 ; Guānhuà ; 'language of officials'. For most of this period, this language
12875-504: The technology transfers that would enable Taiwan to build its own submarines, and in the following years multiple design proposals from countries that reportedly includes India and Japan were considered. In May 2019, Taiwan revealed a scale model of its chosen design for an indigenous built diesel-electric attack submarine. The boats will be assembled using Japanese construction techniques in Taiwan. A Japanese team consisting of retired engineers from Mitsubishi and Kawasaki Heavy Industries
13000-608: The then ruling party Kuomintang (KMT) and was one of the chief drafters of the special state-to-state relations doctrine under the President Lee Teng-hui . During the first term of Chen Shui-bian 's presidency, Tsai served as Minister of the Mainland Affairs Council . She joined the DPP in 2004 and served briefly as a DPP-nominated at-large member of the Legislative Yuan , and was then appointed as Vice Premier under Premier Su Tseng-chang until
13125-779: The three active nuclear power plants as of 2016, the Jinshan Nuclear Power Plant was shut down in July 2019, the Kuosheng Nuclear Power Plant will be decommissioned in March 2023, and the final nuclear power plant to shut down will be the Maanshan Nuclear Power Plant in May 2025. On 5 July 2017, the first Forward-Looking Infrastructure Bill passed the Legislative Yuan. The bill provided $ 420 billion NTD in funds over
13250-623: The tonal distinctions, compared with about 5,000 in Vietnamese (still a largely monosyllabic language), and over 8,000 in English. Most modern varieties tend to form new words through polysyllabic compounds . In some cases, monosyllabic words have become disyllabic formed from different characters without the use of compounding, as in 窟窿 ; kūlong from 孔 ; kǒng ; this is especially common in Jin varieties. This phonological collapse has led to
13375-547: The traditional Western notion of a word. A Chinese cí can consist of more than one character–morpheme, usually two, but there can be three or more. Examples of Chinese words of more than two syllables include 汉堡包 ; 漢堡包 ; hànbǎobāo ; 'hamburger', 守门员 ; 守門員 ; shǒuményuán ; 'goalkeeper', and 电子邮件 ; 電子郵件 ; diànzǐyóujiàn ; 'e-mail'. All varieties of modern Chinese are analytic languages : they depend on syntax (word order and sentence structure), rather than inflectional morphology (changes in
13500-472: The two sides. She further remarked that cross-strait relations had reached a "historical turning point." During her speech on the Double Tenth Day on October 10, 2021, President Tsai rejected the idea of " complete unification of Chinese motherland " through a peaceful unification under "One country, two systems" proposed by the Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the 72nd Anniversary of the founding of
13625-497: The umbrella of the Forward-Looking Infrastructure initiative have been used to fund green energy initiatives. The administration plans to install 1,000 wind turbines on land and offshore and has contracted Ørsted of Denmark to install 900 MW of capacity and wpd of Germany to install 1 GW of capacity. Taiwan's first offshore wind farm, Formosa I, consisting of 22 wind turbines expected to produce 128 MW,
13750-512: The use of tones in Chinese is the application of the four tones of Standard Chinese, along with the neutral tone, to the syllable ma . The tones are exemplified by the following five Chinese words: In contrast, Standard Cantonese has six tones. Historically, finals that end in a stop consonant were considered to be " checked tones " and thus counted separately for a total of nine tones. However, they are considered to be duplicates in modern linguistics and are no longer counted as such: Chinese
13875-411: The vote, she conceded defeat to President Ma in an international press conference, resigning her seat as Chairman of the DPP. On 15 February 2015, Tsai officially registered for the Democratic Progressive Party's presidential nomination primary. Though Lai Ching-te and Su Tseng-chang were seen as likely opponents, Tsai was the only candidate to run in the primary and the DPP officially nominated her as
14000-402: The way for U.S. pork imports and removing a major hurdle for bilateral trade talks between Taiwan and the United States. This move proved controversial domestically, and a referendum to reinstate the ban was defeated in 2021. On June 1, 2022, Taiwan established a trade negotiation framework titled the U.S.-Taiwan Initiative on 21st-Century Trade. On June 1, 2023, an initial trade agreement
14125-517: The widely held belief that she maintained Pan-Green sympathies, Tsai joined the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2004. She was subsequently nominated by the DPP to be a candidate in the 2004 legislative election and was elected as a legislator-at-large. On 26 January 2006, Tsai was appointed to the post of vice president of the Executive Yuan , a position commonly referred to as vice premier. She concurrently served as chairwoman of
14250-452: The words in newspapers, and 60% of the words in science magazines. Vietnam, Korea, and Japan each developed writing systems for their own languages, initially based on Chinese characters , but later replaced with the hangul alphabet for Korean and supplemented with kana syllabaries for Japanese, while Vietnamese continued to be written with the complex chữ Nôm script. However, these were limited to popular literature until
14375-517: The written language used throughout China changed comparatively little, crystallizing into a prestige form known as Classical or Literary Chinese . Literature written distinctly in the Classical form began to emerge during the Spring and Autumn period . Its use in writing remained nearly universal until the late 19th century, culminating with the widespread adoption of written vernacular Chinese with
14500-399: The ~2,500-ton class and 70 metres (230 ft) in length. CSBC Corporation, Taiwan was awarded a contract to build eight submarines. The initial project contract is for US$ 3.3 billion with projected procurement costs of US$ 10bn for a fleet of ten boats. The first submarine of the class, Hai Kun , is estimated to have cost approximately 1.54 billion dollars. It is estimated that around 40% of
14625-453: Was a koiné based on dialects spoken in the Nanjing area, though not identical to any single dialect. By the middle of the 19th century, the Beijing dialect had become dominant and was essential for any business with the imperial court. In the 1930s, a standard national language ( 国语 ; 國語 ; Guóyǔ ), was adopted. After much dispute between proponents of northern and southern dialects and an abortive attempt at an artificial pronunciation,
14750-468: Was born at Mackay Memorial Hospital in Zhongshan District , Taipei City on 31 August 1956, the youngest of eleven children. Her father, Tsai Chieh-sheng (1918–2006), was a businessman who ran an auto repair shop, and her mother Chang Chin-fong (1925–2018) was a housewife. During her high school period, she studied at Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School . She studied law at
14875-467: Was disgusted by what he considered cowardly behavior, and that the soldier's critiques were unfair to the preparatory staff. The case raised concern on the standard operating procedure regarding data security breaches affecting the presidential office. Under Tsai, several countries which had formally recognized the Republic of China (ROC) switched recognition to the People's Republic of China (PRC): São Tomé and Príncipe in 2016, Panama in 2017,
15000-433: Was hidden by their written form. Often different compounds for the same concept were in circulation for some time before a winner emerged, and sometimes the final choice differed between countries. The proportion of vocabulary of Chinese origin thus tends to be greater in technical, abstract, or formal language. For example, in Japan, Sino-Japanese words account for about 35% of the words in entertainment magazines, over half
15125-484: Was in 2025, though a 78-month build time suggested a somewhat later delivery. Between December 2020 and February 2021, the United States reportedly approved the export of three key systems to Taiwan for the program: digital sonar systems, integrated combat systems and auxiliary equipment systems (periscopes). In 2021 it was announced that the production timeline had been moved up with the prototype vessel expected to be launched in September 2023. The ceremonial keel laying of
15250-602: Was set aside in favor of domestic options. The Ministry of National Defense announced in 2014 that Taiwan will construct its own diesel-electric attack submarines (SSKs) with help from the United States , and in 2016 a submarine development center was established by CSBC Corporation, Taiwan to oversee the Indigenous Defense Submarine program under the code name "Hai Chang" ( Chinese : 海昌 ). In April 2018, President Donald Trump approved
15375-771: Was set to $ 327 billion NTD in 2018 and $ 346 billion in 2019. The defense budget in 2020 was set to $ 411 billion NTD, estimated to be 2.3% of GDP, representing an 8.3% increase in total spending over the previous year and a 0.2% increase in percentage of GDP. In 2021 it was set to $ 453 billion NTD, estimated to be 2.4% of GDP, and a 4.4% increase over the previous year. The administration has also focused on defensive self-sufficiency and developing indigenous industries, such as in submarines and missiles. The AIDC T-5 Brave Eagle indigenous jet trainer , which started development in 2017, successfully conducted its first test flight in 2020. On 29 June 2020, Tsai announced measures to shore up Taiwan's military reserves, including assigning them
15500-603: Was set up to investigate corruption within the DPP. On 25 April 2010, Tsai participated in a televised debate against President and Kuomintang chairman Ma Ying-jeou over a proposed trade agreement, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement (ECFA); while President Ma believed ECFA would increase Taiwanese exports to mainland China and lower unemployment rates , Tsai said it "will force Taiwan to open up for cheap Chinese exports eventually" and certain domestic industries will be harmed by
15625-405: Was signed with the United States on June 1, 2023 under this framework, which streamlined customs regulations, established common regulatory practices, and introduced anti-corruption measures, with further measures still in discussion. The Tsai administration has stated an electricity supply goal of 20% from renewables , 30% from coal and 50% from liquefied natural gas by 2025. Bills under
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