MAC to work to boost education of nation's children studying in China

The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) announced a new plan yesterday to strengthen supplemental education for Taiwanese children of businesspeople working in China.

MAC Chairwoman Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) raised the plan in a cross-ministerial coordinating meeting yesterday. The MAC and the Ministry of Education subsequently agreed to carry out the plan jointly.

The package proposals, according to the MAC's Deputy Director of the Department of Cultural and Educational Affairs Wang Ling-ling (王玲玲), will focus on encouraging children of Taiwanese businesspeople in China to return home to attend the supplemental education camp held by the government in the summer.

Other measures include helping teachers at Taiwanese schools in China return to Taiwan for further training, establishing scholarships for those students studying in China and strengthening exchanges between Taiwanese students in China and those at home.

Since the Chinese government can't face "the reality that there are two separate jurisdictions" over the two sides of the Taiwan Strait, "they simply [order the Taiwanese schools to] delete or change the context of Taiwan-published textbooks that involves [the nation's] ideology, values or democracratic development," MAC Vice Chairman Chen Ming-tong (陳明通) told the press after the meeting.

Chen said that the Chinese government's interference in the schools' curriculum has created "a separation of educational contexts that jeopardizes the consistency and completeness of the Taiwanese education system."

Chen remarked that "the establishment of schools for the Taiwanese businesspeople's children has a positive mission -- to shape values of democracy. In order to solve the difficulties encountered by those schools, the package plan will serve as a blueprint for how to help those children's education."

According to Executive Sectary of the Mainland Affairs Division of the Ministry of Education, Liu Meng-Yang (劉孟陽), "it is the ministry's responsibility to cooperate with MAC to implement the measures."

The plan will be sent to the Executive Yuan for review next month. If approved, it is expected to be launched next year.

Currently, there are an estimated 1,200 students who study in the nation's two schools for Taiwanese businesspeople's children -- the Dongguan School for Taiwan Businesspeople's Children in Guandong Province and the East-China School for Taiwan Businesspeople's Children in Jiangsu Province.

"We are concerned about the education problems of Taiwanese businesspeople's children in China since the number of the students are growing" Chen said.