Taiwan document photos online

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Taiwan's government decided its own passport had an identity problem: too many travellers were being mistaken for citizens of mainland China. So in January 2021 it issued a redesigned cover that shrank the English words "Republic of China" into a small ring around the national emblem and enlarged "TAIWAN" in bold directly above the word "passport." It is one of the rare cases where a country deliberately rewrote its own travel document's typography for the sake of recognition at the border, and the change made global headlines as a quiet act of statecraft printed onto a booklet cover.

• Passport power As of July 2025, the Republic of China (Taiwan) passport ranked 33rd on the Henley Passport Index with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to 139 destinations, a three-place jump from the previous edition.
• Passport design In January 2021 Taiwan reissued its e-passport with "Republic of China" shrunk to a thin ring around the emblem and "TAIWAN" enlarged in bold, specifically so holders would stop being mistaken for citizens of the People's Republic of China.
• National ID Every Taiwanese national ID number is one letter plus nine digits where the letter encodes the place of first household registration (A means Taipei) and the very first digit reveals gender: 1 for men, 2 for women, with the final digit a checksum.
• Documents Taiwan's national identity card is issued only to people who hold both nationality and household registration, so legal nationality alone does not automatically grant the ID, residency in the household system does.
• Currency origin The New Taiwan dollar was born in 1949 to kill off hyperinflation: it replaced the Old Taiwan dollar at an exchange rate of one new dollar for every 40,000 old ones.
• Banknote The rarely seen NT$2,000 note celebrates Taiwan's space programme, its face showing the FORMOSAT-1 satellite, a rocket launch and an array of communication dishes rather than a politician.
• Money milestone For four decades higher-value notes carried Chiang Kai-shek's portrait until the 2000 series swapped him for landscapes and heritage, and only in July 2000 did the New Taiwan dollar formally become legal tender rather than a note secondary to the silver yuan.
• Record Taipei 101 hangs the world's largest tuned mass damper, a 660-tonne golden steel sphere of 41 stacked plates that is the only such stabiliser on Earth left open for tourists to view, between floors 87 and 92.
• Democracy Taiwan held its first direct presidential election only on 23 March 1996, when Lee Teng-hui won 54 percent of the vote, making the island's full democracy younger than many of its voters.