A group of students and young professionals from the US are visiting Taiwan to participate in a new youth exchange program that began yesterday and seeks to increase their understanding of the nation, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
During the three-week Mosaic Taiwan program, the participants are to develop engagement with their Taiwanese counterparts and meet government officials to discuss important issues on the Taiwan-US relationship, said the ministry, which is sponsoring the program.
Workshops and lectures are scheduled for the 27 participants, who are between 20 and 35 years old, the ministry said. For one of the lectures, former vice president Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) is to talk about the importance of Taiwan’s participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade bloc.
Meanwhile, participants are scheduled to visit several government agencies, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Mainland Affairs Council, as well as universities, to exchange ideas with professors and experts in education, the ministry said.
The new program is to include travel around the nation and present an opportunity to gain first-hand experience of Taiwanese culture by visiting the Ningxia night market, one of the largest in Taipei, the ministry said.
The participants are also expected to stay with local host families in central Taiwan, the ministry said, adding that the participants are also to visit historical sites and famous tourist attractions to see the nation’s beautiful natural scenery.
In an effort to increase the participants’ understanding of the nation, part of the program focuses on introducing Taiwan’s economic development and demonstrating how the nation is striving to maintain its competitiveness, the ministry said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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