A Taiwanese student was on Sunday identified as having joined Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers in throwing water balloons at Democratic Progressive Party lawmakers at the Legislative Yuan on Wednesday during a scuffle over the Cabinet’s budget proposal for the Forward-looking Infrastructure Development Program.
Yesterday it was confirmed that the student, surnamed Han (韓), who is enrolled at the Communication University of China in Beijing and working as an intern at the Chinese-language daily China Times, was taken into the Legislative Yuan by one of KMT Legislator Hsu Chih-jung’s (徐志榮) assistants.
Legislative Yuan Secretary-General Lin Chih-chia (林志嘉) yesterday told a news conference that Han would be referred to the police for obstructing legislative proceedings.
While some people might dismiss the incident as trivial and consider it an isolated case, it should not be taken lightly — as long as the China element is involved. Beijing makes no secret of its ambition to annex Taiwan and has stepped up promotion of the policies it dubs the “three middles and the youth” (三中一青) — residents of central and southern Taiwan, middle and low-income families, small and medium-sized enterprises, and young people — and “one generation and one stratum” (一代一線) — the younger generation and the grassroots stratum.
Particularly after the Sunflower movement in 2014, China has been putting greater emphasis on engaging younger Taiwanese and making them the target of its united front efforts.
Aside from trying to attract Taiwanese teenagers with summer camps and lower entrance scores for Chinese universities, Beijing has been employing economic tools, such as scholarships and job opportunities, in its attempts to lure younger Taiwanese to the other side of the Taiwan Strait.
Han is studying on a Chinese government scholarship and is the leader of a student club at his school. The maximum scholarship grant at the school is 4,000 yuan (US$593) per semester, according to its Web site, which also states that Taiwanese students applying for scholarship must acknowledge that there is “one China.”
Needless to say, all student clubs at the university are sure to have ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
The latest figures from the Ministry of Education show that there are about 10,000 Taiwanese studying in China and about 9,000 Chinese studying in Taiwan.
This is not to say that cross-strait academic exchanges should be stopped, because such exchanges promote mutual understanding and help improve Taiwan’s competitiveness in the international community. But as far as educational exchanges are concerned, they should be left at that — they should not be mixed with politics.
However, bearing in mind that Chinese exchange student Zhou Hongxu (周泓旭) was in March detained on suspicion of espionage, Taiwan should stay vigilant and must not naively assume that Beijing would abide by academic principles.
The public should not view every Taiwanese studying in China in a negative light or view every Chinese student in Taiwan through a political lens.
However, the government needs to stay vigilant, because as long as Beijing holds to its ambition to annex Taiwan, it will never cease its clandestine tricks to politicize any cross-strait exchange otherwise deemed harmless.
Minister of Labor Hung Sun-han (洪申翰) on April 9 said that the first group of Indian workers could arrive as early as this year as part of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in India and the India Taipei Association. Signed in February 2024, the MOU stipulates that Taipei would decide the number of migrant workers and which industries would employ them, while New Delhi would manage recruitment and training. Employment would be governed by the laws of both countries. Months after its signing, the two sides agreed that 1,000 migrant workers from India would
In recent weeks, Taiwan has witnessed a surge of public anxiety over the possible introduction of Indian migrant workers. What began as a policy signal from the Ministry of Labor quickly escalated into a broader controversy. Petitions gathered thousands of signatures within days, political figures issued strong warnings, and social media became saturated with concerns about public safety and social stability. At first glance, this appears to be a straightforward policy question: Should Taiwan introduce Indian migrant workers or not? However, this framing is misleading. The current debate is not fundamentally about India. It is about Taiwan’s labor system, its
On March 31, the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs released declassified diplomatic records from 1995 that drew wide domestic media attention. One revelation stood out: North Korea had once raised the possibility of diplomatic relations with Taiwan. In a meeting with visiting Chinese officials in May 1995, as then-Chinese president Jiang Zemin (江澤民) prepared for a visit to South Korea, North Korean officials objected to Beijing’s growing ties with Seoul and raised Taiwan directly. According to the newly released records, North Korean officials asked why Pyongyang should refrain from developing relations with Taiwan while China and South Korea were expanding high-level
Japan’s imminent easing of arms export rules has sparked strong interest from Warsaw to Manila, Reuters reporting found, as US President Donald Trump wavers on security commitments to allies, and the wars in Iran and Ukraine strain US weapons supplies. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s ruling party approved the changes this week as she tries to invigorate the pacifist country’s military industrial base. Her government would formally adopt the new rules as soon as this month, three Japanese government officials told Reuters. Despite largely isolating itself from global arms markets since World War II, Japan spends enough on its own
RSS