The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) yesterday accused the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of pushing Taiwan into crisis with policies that are creating an over-dependence on China.
The remark came after the KMT legislative caucus held a morning news conference to warn that many institutes of higher education might have to close, costing faculty members their jobs, if Chinese students stop coming to Taiwan because DPP presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) wins the election on Saturday next week.
“President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) has been in power for nearly eight years, and the KMT caucus’ latest series of ‘Taiwan in crisis’ new conferences are just a slap in Ma’s face,” DPP spokesperson Ruan Jhao-syong (阮昭雄) said at a news conference at the party’s headquarters in Taipei.
Photo: Lin Liang-sheng, Taipei Times
“Institutes of higher education are in crisis because the government’s China-leaning policies have created an over-dependency on China in many aspects,” he said.
He then ridiculed the KMT caucus’ claim that Taiwanese universities are dependent on Chinese students for their survival.
The DPP encourages academic exchanges with other nations and welcomes students from all other countries — including China — to study in Taiwan, Ruan said.
However, seeing Chinese students as the solution for the drop in student enrollments in universities in Taiwan simply shows that the KMT has a very narrow understanding of the issue, he said.
“It is inevitable that there would be more supply available than demand in universities because people are having fewer children. However, the solution should be reforming higher education through upgrading educational quality and schools developing special features,” Ruan said. “Increasing Chinese enrollment is not the solution.”
Higher education reforms are about quality, not just quantity, and therefore it is the transformation and merger of universities according to a national economic development strategy that is the key, Ruan said.
Ruan also criticized KMT presidential candidate Eric Chu’s (朱立倫) stance on the importation of US pork products, saying that he keeps changing his mind.
During a visit to the US in November last year, Chu said that Taiwan’s standard on the leaness enhancing additive ractopamine should be the same as neighboring countries, a position he reiterated in a media interview later that month, saying that Taiwan should formally establish a standard for allowing residue of ractopamine in pork in accordance with other countries, Ruan said. However, now Chu says he would not allow any imports of pork that had traces of the drug, Ruan said.
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