Newly inaugurated Minister of Education Wu Maw-kuen (吳茂昆) yesterday reiterated that he had never illegally worked in China and said the Ministry of Education would in the next week make a decision on the appointment of National Taiwan University (NTU) president-elect Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔), who is facing similar accusations.
Wu yesterday took office as the new education minister at a handover ceremony in Taipei that was presided over by Minister Without Portfolio Lin Wan-yi (林萬億).
At the ceremony, Wu said that Premier William Lai (賴清德) told him he was chosen because he was a scientist.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
“The premier wants to teach young people how to think critically and scientifically,” he said.
Wu told at a news conference after the ceremony that following through on policies implemented by his predecessor, Pan Wen-chung (潘文忠), including promoting public childcare and completing new curriculum guidelines for the next academic year would be his priorities as minister.
“Ensuring that the nation’s higher-education system is ready for new challenges brought by the advancement of technology is also important,” he said.
Asked how he would handle Kuan’s case, Wu said the ministry would hold a second interministerial task force meeting next week and make a decision.
Pan formed a task force earlier this month to investigate whether Kuan has worked in China.
Government officials, public servants and teachers are banned from working in China and taking up any other part-time positions.
The Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (台灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例) also bans Taiwanese from working at Chinese government institutions.
Since the Executive Yuan announced Wu as the new minister last week, he has been accused of working as an adviser to three institutions in China, including Western Superconductivity Technologies Co (WST), which is said to belong to a Chinese arms manufacturer.
He has also been accused of favoritism, spending the majority of his time outside the university and of illegally obtaining a total of NT$176 million (US$6 million) in research bonuses from National Dong Hwa University (NDHU) while serving as its president.
Some have also speculated that Wu had dual Taiwanese-US citizenship while he served as National Science Council minister in 2004 and NDHU president in 2012, which would have been illegal.
Wu on Wednesday issued a long statement denying each allegation.
“I gave up my US citizenship in 2002 after I was appointed deputy minister of the National Science Council,” he said in the statement.
While at NDHU, his time away from the university, on leave or on business trips, was all in line with regulations, he added.
He received additional research bonuses from NDHU “due to an administrative error” and has already returned them to the university, he said.
He also denied having illegally worked in China, saying that WST listed him as their adviser after learning that he had provided informal consultation for Taiwan-based Advanced Superconducting Technologies (AST), which was a WST business partner.
Former AST general manager H.T. Chen (陳輝堂) after yesterday’s conference apologized for the trouble the company has caused Wu, adding that former company chairman Wang Shou-tien (王守田) might have listed Wu as an adviser in hopes of attracting more sponsors.
Wu is a renowned physicist specializing in superconductivity and was nominated for the 1987 Nobel Prize in Physics after he and Paul Chu (朱經武) discovered a superconductor.
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