China has always used its relative economic advantage to attract investment from Taiwanese industry and to purchase a lot of Taiwanese products. If this were treated as normal foreign direct investment and trade exchanges, there would be nothing wrong with it.
However, industrial relocation to China has caused an outflow of Taiwan’s technology. China often lures Taiwanese companies by promising to make purchases without later placing orders, and this is creating problems for local industry that relies heavily on the Chinese market.
This phenomenon has started to spill over into the world of academia. Exchanges between Taiwan’s and China’s academic circles are nothing new. Some Taiwanese academics travel more frequently to Beijing, Nanjing or Shanghai than to Kaohsiung or Taichung.
After having influenced a large number of Taiwanese academics, China has switched its focus to Taiwanese university students. In recent years, private Chinese companies and government agencies have offered opportunities for so-called “internships” to Taiwanese university students during winter and summer vacations, furnishing free transportation, accommodation and even allowances. Under the banner of cross-strait exchanges and broadening horizens, some students chase after these schemes like flocks of ducks.
Meanwhile, some Chinese academics are submitting papers to Taiwanese journals in an attempt to “exchange views.” I am the editor-in-chief of a Taiwanese journal, and it has received submissions from several Chinese academics in recent months.
However, their papers are all written using simplified Chinese characters and they fail to follow the journal’s writing format and style. Furthermore, some papers begin with the words: “Our country.” Based on the concept that academic exchange transcends borders, the journal has asked submitters to change the simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese characters, revise the text to meet the requirements of our journal’s format and change “our country” to “China.”
The response from academics in China is that their papers conform with international standards and follow the “national format.” Some said that they did not know how to change the format and asked us to do it for them.
We courteously replied that there is no international standard for such publications, and that we were not sure which country they referred to when they said that they followed the “national format.” We also told them clearly that if they did not change the format, we would not submit their papers for review.
Domestically published articles that contain the term “our country” clearly refer to Taiwan, and it is clear that the intention of these Chinese academics is to conflate Taiwan with China in order to confuse readers. If Taiwanese journals publish these kind of papers, the nation will soon turn into a Chinese province without even realizing it.
Who has distorted academic exchanges with their arrogant attitude? Who has allowed academic exchanges to take on political overtones? Who has pushed talented Taiwanese to China, while then complaining about the outflow of local talent?
Through such deification, Taiwanese politicians have placed themselves above the gods in temples, chapels and churches, while politically influential businesspeople calculate the rate of return of their political donations and distribute the products of their tainted and inferior brands. Do you really know what you all are doing?
Wu Pei-ing is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun’s (鄭麗文) recent visit to Beijing and her upcoming visit to Washington will serve as a high-level test of her diplomatic mettle. In Beijing, Cheng was received with symbolic gestures, a warm reception, and high-level access. In Washington, she will receive far less pomp and far sharper questions about the KMT’s vision for the future of Taiwan. Her challenge will be to persuade Washington that the KMT’s engagement with China can coexist with strong deterrence. Cheng’s April 7-12 visit to mainland China coincided with an intense period of conflict in Iran. Despite the strategic significance of Cheng’s trip,
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent the vast Asian chemicals industry into a tailspin. Deprived of the likes of Qatari natural gas and Saudi Arabian oil, the region’s fertilizer and plastics plants are slowing production or even shutting down. Everywhere except China, that is. In petrochemicals, China is unique. As well as a traditional industry that uses oil and gas as feedstock, it has parallel output that relies on its abundant domestic coal. Unsurprisingly, India and other regional powers want to copy and paste the Chinese method. This would not be easy — or climate friendly. The
History might remember 2026, not 2022, as the year artificial intelligence (AI) truly changed everything. ChatGPT’s launch was a product moment. What is happening now is an anthropological moment: AI is no longer merely answering questions. It is now taking initiative and learning from others to get things done, behaving less like software and more like a colleague. The economic consequence is the rise of the one-person company — a structure anticipated in the 2024 book The Choices Amid Great Changes, which I coauthored. The real target of AI is not labor. It is hierarchy. When AI sharply reduces the cost
US President Donald Trump recently repeated his claim that “Taiwan stole America’s chip industry,” reigniting public debate on the issue. As a former Taiwanese minister of economic affairs and an entrepreneur deeply involved in semiconductor supply chain development, I feel a responsibility to clarify this misunderstanding. From the perspective of global industrial evolution and the economic principle of comparative advantage, such a statement appears overly simplistic and risks obscuring the essence of the issue. The rise of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry was not built on “replacing America,” but rather emerged as a result of countries pursuing different development paths within the
RSS