Minister of Education Wu Ching-chi (吳清基) yesterday denied a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislator’s allegation that 4,000 Chinese students would come to Taiwan as exchange students funded by China-based Taiwanese businesspeople at the request of China.
Wu told reporters on his way to a meeting of the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that the ministry had no knowledge of the matter. He said all Chinese students wanting to undertake short-term research in Taiwan are required to file an application and pass a ministry review.
Wu was responding to DPP Legislator Kuan Bi-ling’s (管碧玲) claim that the Education Bureau in Fujian Province had launched a series of projects in March whereby Taiwanese businesses based in China were encouraged to subsidize Chinese students by about 500 yuan (US$73) per person a year to “jointly cultivate talent.”
The Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) yesterday quoted Kuan as saying that a document sent by the bureau to Chinese schools had even urged them to “organize students to study in Taiwan to promote interaction between youth across the Taiwan Strait and promote unification.”
A total of 24 universities are to participate in the scheme, including Chaoyang University of Technology, Jinwen University of Science and Technology, Chinese Culture University and Ming Chuan University, with as many as 46 Taiwanese companies offering financial assistance to Chinese schools, Kuan said.
During a question-and-answer session with the minister, Kuan said even Chinese Television System (CTS) was involved in the program. Fifty-five students from Fujian Polytechnic of Information Technology doing short-term research at Lunghwa University of Science and Technology would have access to film and TV equipment purchased and stored at CTS by the ministry while they are doing internships at the TV station, she said.
Taiwan allows Chinese students conducing research to stay for up to one year, but they cannot enroll in local schools.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration would like to allow local universities to recruit Chinese students by the fall, but the relevant legislation has not yet been passed.
While the DPP has agreed to the admission of Chinese students, it has insisted that a series of restrictions previously proposed by the ministry be written into law. These include no government scholarships, limits on locations and schools available to Chinese students, no bonus points for entrance exams and no part-time jobs outside schools.
The DPP also proposed yesterday that Chinese students should be banned from entering Taiwan for business or professional activities for five years after graduating from a local school.
Kuan told the committee that the measure was meant to stop the students from taking up job opportunities in Taiwan, but the KMT said the proposal was unreasonable.
The committee completed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the University Act (大學法) and the Vocational School Act (專科學校法) late yesterday although legislators failed to reach agreement on writing the restrictions into law.
The bills were referred for further cross-party negotiation.
A decision was made not to hold more hearings on the two bills as long as the Internal Administration Committee holds public hearings on a related proposed amendment to the Act Governing the Relations Between the Peoples of the Taiwan Area and Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例).
RSS