Students at a Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) cram school in Taipei said they were upset when they earlier this month found that the US-based Educational Testing Service (ETS), widely known for examinations it develops for students planning to study in the US, including the Test of English for International Communication, Graduate Record Examinations and the TOEFL, has again changed the way it refers to Taiwan on its Web site to “Taiwan, China.”
The school’s owner, who asked to be identified by his English name, Austin Lin, said some of his students discovered the name change when registering this month for a TOEFL test on the ETS Web site.
Lin said the incident surprised him, because he had heard about Chinese students having their US visa applications rejected or their stays cut short after US President Donald Trump took office.
Photo: Screengrab by Sean Lin/Taipei Times
Such incidents were unheard of during former US president Barack Obama’s time in office, he said.
The Trump administration, which generally takes a more confrontational attitude toward China, has reportedly imposed a stricter policy on Chinese students, due in part to Washington’s concern about Chinese students taking technological know-how they learn in the US back to China, which would intensify the US-China rivalry, Lin said.
It is “disappointing” that ETS, as a non-profit organization with an influential role in education, should get involved, he added.
ETS adhering to Beijing’s “one China” principle was likely motivated by the large number of Chinese students studying in the US, Lin said.
According to the Open Doors 2017 Executive Summary published by the Institute of International Education, Chinese students account for more than 30 percent of international students studying in the US.
“China has continually used its economic power to restrict Taiwan’s international space. It is frightening that such efforts have even penetrated higher education,” Lin added.
He said that the government should step up its efforts to retain local talent, saying that China has wooed away some Taiwanese overseas students by offering them high-paying teaching posts after graduation.
Some students at the school said they had filed protests with ETS.
One student, Chen Kuan-hsien (陳冠憲), said he wrote a letter to ETS to protest the name change.
“I protested that I could not find my country on the registration page, and did not know what to select,” Chen said. “Then I saw ‘Taiwan, China’ — that is not my country.”
Another student, Liu Chiang-yi (劉昌邑), said ETS still referred to Taiwan as “Taiwan” on its Web site when he registered last month for the TOEFL.
In 2006, when ETS introduced the Internet-based TOEFL, it also changed the way in which it referred to Taiwan, changing from “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, Province of China,” which triggered widespread protest among test-takers over how the institute ignored Taiwanese sovereignty.
ETS, saying that the first name change was due to “negligence,” eventually changed the designation back to “Taiwan” after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs intervened and asked it to make the correction.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
PREPAREDNESS: Given the difficulty of importing ammunition during wartime, the Ministry of National Defense said it would prioritize ‘coproduction’ partnerships A newly formed unit of the Marine Corps tasked with land-based security operations has recently replaced its aging, domestically produced rifles with more advanced, US-made M4A1 rifles, a source said yesterday. The unnamed source familiar with the matter said the First Security Battalion of the Marine Corps’ Air Defense and Base Guard Group has replaced its older T65K2 rifles, which have been in service since the late 1980s, with the newly received M4A1s. The source did not say exactly when the upgrade took place or how many M4A1s were issued to the battalion. The confirmation came after Chinese-language media reported
RSS