Taiwan News is an English-language news website and former newspaper in Taiwan. It is published by foods company I-Mei Foods, which also publishes the Chinese-language news weekly of the same name.
History
China News was founded on 6 June 1949 in Taipei by James Wei, a journalist with close ties to the KMT and former employee of the Ministry of Information. The newspaper was established to cater for foreign residents and the local population in Taiwan. At the time it was the only English-language daily newspaper in Taiwan and it was a newspaper published in the afternoon. Later on, in order to compete with its new competitor, China News had to change and was published in the morning in order not to lose its advertisements. In 1960, the newspaper switched to block printing in a full-size page format. Wei left the newspaper in 1965. Wei was also a Reuters correspondent and deputy director of the Central News Agency. During his later years he was the sixth Director of the Government Information Office, serving from October 31, 1966, to June 1, 1972. Wei was a close advisor to Chiang Ching-kuo. China News ran into financial difficulties in 1996 and received capital injection from I-Mei Foods, but the management of the newspaper was unchanged. In May 1999, I-Mei Foods acquired 50 percent stake in the newspaper for NTD$60 million. The newspaper's name was changed to Taiwan News to reflect the newspaper's new focus on readers in Taiwan and to avoid confusion with China Daily and China News Service. After the change in ownership, Taiwan News increased its page count and lowered staff wages. Under the ownership of I-Mei Foods, Simone Wei became the newspaper's chairperson and I-Mei CEO Kao Chih-ming became the publisher. By 1998, 63 percent of Taiwan News' readership were local readers and the rest were businesspeople, diplomats, academics, teachers and students from overseas. Taiwan News mainly republished wire stories and had few articles with original reporting, due to the lack of financial resources to hire English-speaking journalists and an English-speaking environment in Taiwan. On 1 January 2008, the Taiwan News started to publish in a tabloid format and abandoned the broadsheet format. On 28 February 2015, Taiwan News published its last print edition and became an online newspaper exclusively. It is now published online in both English and Mandarin versions.
