Same-sex Taiwanese-Chinese couples are now legally able to register their marriages in Taiwan, Taipei said Thursday, recognising cross-strait unions for the first time. Taiwan has long been at the forefront of Asia’s burgeoning LGBTQ rights movement, becoming in 2019 the first place in the region to legalise marriage equality. But tensions between Taiwan and China — which claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory and maintains daily military movements around it — have meant cross-strait couples were not afforded the same right.