New Taipei City

The New Taipei City is a special municipality and the most populous city in Taiwan. Located in northern Taiwan, the city includes a substantial stretch of the island's northern coastline and surrounds the Taipei Basin, making it the second largest special municipality by area, behind Kaohsiung City. New Taipei is bordered by Keelung to the northeast, Yilan County to the southeast, and Taoyuan City to the southwest. It completely surrounds Taipei City.

Name

New Taipei City was originally a county known as Taipei County before 2010, which surrounds Taipei City. After the county's population overtook that of Taipei City, it was decided that the county should be upgraded to city status. However, it could not simply rename itself as "Taipei City", because Taipei City already existed.

The name Taipei means "Northern Tai", and as a result the new city was given the name of New North City, Xīnběi Shì (新北市). County authorities at first rendered the name of the proposed municipality in English as "Xinbei", the pinyin romanization of New North City, but both candidates for the city's first mayoral election opposed the name. Consequently, citing public opinion, the inaugural mayor, Eric Chu, requested and received approval from the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) to render the name in English as New Taipei City. This rendering became official on 31 December 2010.