The Ministry of Education confirmed on Wednesday that Taiwan could recognize Chinese diplomas obtained after 1997 as early as next June, provided that bills related to the proposal are approved by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT)-controlled legislature (meaning that they likely will be).
The ministry, we are told, plans to start by recognizing diplomas from 41 top universities — those that Beijing has poured more money into since 1985. This includes Peking University, Tsinghua University, Tianjin University and Fudan University. Public universities would only be able to recruit Chinese graduate students, while private universities could recruit undergraduates.
Anyone who has read the paper “National Humiliation, History Education, and the Politics of Historical Memory: Patriotic Education Campaign in China” by Zheng Wang of Seton Hall University, published in International Studies Quarterly last year, would know that extra funding by Beijing most likely means more brainwashing in school curriculums. If Jian Junbo (簡軍波), one of Fudan University’s top students, is any indication, products of that system never waver from the party line, not even after long exposure abroad — even at Western universities (the 33-year-old Jian, whose op-ed titled “Taiwan’s ‘opportunist’ president alters tack,” published in the Asia Times online on Aug. 11, highlighted a complete lack of understanding of Taiwan’s democratic system and threatened war if work on unification was stalled, is a visiting scholar at Aalborg University in Denmark).
This is why, to give two examples, so many Chinese students abroad supported Beijing’s crackdown in Tibet prior to the Olympics last year, and why Chinese students in Australia led attacks on the Melbourne International Film Festival’s Web site in August over a documentary on Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer.
The more Jians that enter the school system in Taiwan, the more difficult it will be for Taiwanese students and professors to advance their own historical discourse. The mix of chauvinism and strong nationalism that characterized the Chinese academics who spoke at forums in Taipei this month — where they dictated and threatened, while exhibiting a total disinterest in learning from others — would likely be present in those students, who from very early on have been fed propaganda and little else.
Another worry is that an influx of Chinese students embracing their own ideology could result in strong demand for teachers from China, which could engender a process whereby Taiwanese teachers are elbowed out — especially those who espouse a pro-independence line. It wouldn’t be surprising if, in future, the ministry were to announce that it may allow Chinese professors to teach in Taiwan.
As Zheng and others have argued, schools play an important role in the formation of national identity. If the Chinese discourse is allowed to grow roots in Taiwanese schools — through students, curriculums and perhaps professors — then Taiwanese identity will slowly be diluted, and future generations of Taiwanese will have little access to the material that, in their formative years, informs them about, and shapes, who they are.
Of course, all of this would be different — and less worrying — if Chinese who came to Taiwan were keen on learning different opinions and bringing those ideas back to China, in which case exchanges would be positive. But this isn’t the case, and the fault lies with the tremendous efforts at educational socialization that Beijing has made, starting in 1991, with its Patriotic Education Campaign.
Taiwan is under attack on many fronts. By opening up universities to Chinese students, a new beachhead could soon be stormed.
J. Michael Cole is a writer based in Taipei.
On May 7, 1971, Henry Kissinger planned his first, ultra-secret mission to China and pondered whether it would be better to meet his Chinese interlocutors “in Pakistan where the Pakistanis would tape the meeting — or in China where the Chinese would do the taping.” After a flicker of thought, he decided to have the Chinese do all the tape recording, translating and transcribing. Fortuitously, historians have several thousand pages of verbatim texts of Dr. Kissinger’s negotiations with his Chinese counterparts. Paradoxically, behind the scenes, Chinese stenographers prepared verbatim English language typescripts faster than they could translate and type them
More than 30 years ago when I immigrated to the US, applied for citizenship and took the 100-question civics test, the one part of the naturalization process that left the deepest impression on me was one question on the N-400 form, which asked: “Have you ever been a member of, involved in or in any way associated with any communist or totalitarian party anywhere in the world?” Answering “yes” could lead to the rejection of your application. Some people might try their luck and lie, but if exposed, the consequences could be much worse — a person could be fined,
Xiaomi Corp founder Lei Jun (雷軍) on May 22 made a high-profile announcement, giving online viewers a sneak peek at the company’s first 3-nanometer mobile processor — the Xring O1 chip — and saying it is a breakthrough in China’s chip design history. Although Xiaomi might be capable of designing chips, it lacks the ability to manufacture them. No matter how beautifully planned the blueprints are, if they cannot be mass-produced, they are nothing more than drawings on paper. The truth is that China’s chipmaking efforts are still heavily reliant on the free world — particularly on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing
Keelung Mayor George Hsieh (謝國樑) of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) on Tuesday last week apologized over allegations that the former director of the city’s Civil Affairs Department had illegally accessed citizens’ data to assist the KMT in its campaign to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) councilors. Given the public discontent with opposition lawmakers’ disruptive behavior in the legislature, passage of unconstitutional legislation and slashing of the central government’s budget, civic groups have launched a massive campaign to recall KMT lawmakers. The KMT has tried to fight back by initiating campaigns to recall DPP lawmakers, but the petition documents they
RSS