25°4′39.98″N121°31′38.34″E / 25.0777722°N 121.5273167°E /25.0777722; 121.5273167

Radio Taiwan International
中央廣播電臺

Radio Taiwan International building in Taipei
Type	Radio network
Country	Taiwan
Availability	International
Owner	Radio Taiwan International
Launch date	1928
Former names	CBS, Voice of Free China, Radio Taipei International
Official website	Radio Taiwan International

Radio Taiwan International (RTI;Chinese:中央廣播電臺;pinyin:Zhōngyāng Guǎngbò Diàntái) is the English name and call sign of theCentral Broadcasting System (CBS), national broadcaster and international radio service ofTaiwan. It is a public radio station that broadcasts in 14 languages around the world via the internet, shortwave and podcasts. It also has Facebook fan pages in five additional languages.

The Central Broadcasting System was founded in 1928 as the voice of theKuomintang (KMT) government quartered inNanjing onmainland China. During theSecond Sino-Japanese War the KMT was forced by theJapanese forces andpro-Japanese "rebel" Wang Jingwei government to relocate the radio station — along with the capital city, first toHankou in the centralHubei Province and then toChongqing in south-central China.

After the conclusion of theSecond World War, which saw the surrender and withdrawal of Japanese forces, the KMT and theChinese Communist Party resumed theircivil war. The defeated KMT retreated to Taiwan in 1949 and the Central Broadcasting System moved with them.

RTI currently offers audio news and programs about Taiwan in 14 languages. It also has YouTube channels offering video news and programs and can be seen on Twitter and Facebook as well.

After undergoing restructuring during the period 1996–98, CBS broadcast to mainland China and the rest of the world under the call signRadio Taipei International and theVoice of Asia.Radio Taipei International essentially replaced the international radio services of theBroadcasting Corporation of China (BCC), known as theVoice of Free China.Radio Taipei International broadcast to China and to an international audience; by contrast, theVoice of Asia was broadcast to the Asia-Pacific region only and offered a lighter format than RTI. In 2002 theVoice of Asia call sign was dropped to leaveRadio Taipei International as the sole broadcasting name for the service. This was in turn changed toRadio Taiwan International, to avoid confusion on the part of listeners, who had trouble associating Taipei with Taiwan.^[1]

In addition, via domesticAM radio and shortwave, CBS also broadcast three different "networks" in Chinese (mainlyMandarin andTaiwanese) to the mainland. These networks were theNews Network (a news and information-oriented service), theVariety Network (a music and features-oriented service, also known as theMandarin Programme,Taiwanese Programme,Perspective Program, or thePop Network Programme), and theDialect Network (programming aimed at the minorities of China). In time, theVariety Network was renamed theGeneral Network, theNews Network became theMainland Network, and eventually theMainland,General, andDialect Network were merged in withRadio Taiwan International. One consequence of this was that CBS could no longer broadcast domestically over AM radio.

Radio Taiwan International broadcasts to the following countries and regions:

Programming is carried inMandarin,Taiwanese,English,Cantonese,Hakka,Japanese,Indonesian,Thai,Tagalog,Vietnamese,Spanish,German,French,Russian and recentlyUkrainian (previously also inArabic,Burmese,Mongolian andTibetan).^[2]

As of 1 July 2013, RTI terminated its shortwave broadcasts to North and South America due to budget cuts caused by the closure ofWYFR, a Christian religious shortwave station which RTI leased airtime from and whose Florida transmitter RTI used to broadcast to the Americas. RTI programming was broadcast over WYFR on 5.95 MHz and 9.61 MHz between 17:00/18:00 hrs.Eastern until 03:00/04:00. After that point,Family Radio continued to host RTI's audio service to the Chinese community in theNew York City area on a digital subchannel of Family Radio's television station, WFME-TV; this would end in October 2013, when the station was revamped into an international ethnic station,WNYJ-TV.

Radio Taiwan broadcasts daily in Mandarin, Taiwanese (Minnan or Hokkien), Hakka, Cantonese, English, German, French, Russian, Spanish, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian and Korean. It also has Facebook pages in English.^[3][4]

• Taiwan Insider, its flagship weekly video and audio news magazine program
• Taiwan Today, an award-winning audio program on politics and society
• Feast Meets West, an award-winning program about food and culture
• Love! On Air, a program on different aspects of romantic relationships in Taiwan, hosted by Brendan Wong
• As a Student, its only program focuses on campus life in Taiwan, hosted by YouTube creator Wanson Wang
• Behind the Beats, the flagship music program on the music scene in Taiwan, hosted by Emma Benack

• Media in Taiwan
• English language print media published by the Government Information Office
  • Taiwan Review
  • Taiwan Journal
• Voice of Free China

• Official website (in Chinese, English, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean)
•   Media related toRadio Taiwan International at Wikimedia Commons