Chairman of the Mainland Affairs Council Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), recently said that: "In order to promote cross-strait cultural and educational exchanges, the council will talk with the Ministry of Education (MOE) and related bodies about the idea of allowing Chinese students to study in Taiwan." The first step, he added, is to approve the enrollment of Chinese students in Taiwanese universities.
What kind of cultural and educational exchanges does Taiwan need to promote with China? Chinese history and literature make up a large proportion of our education system, starting from elementary schools and continue right up through to university.A plan to establish a graduate institute in Taiwanese history and a department of Taiwanese literature at National Cheng Kung and National Sun Yat-sen universities was rejected by pro-unification Mainlander professors on those campuses. In contrast, China understands Taiwan very well and the amount of Chinese publications in the history of Taiwanese literature surpasses our own at least five fold. Taiwan's university departments which carry Taiwanese literature even go so far as to use Chinese text books on the history of Taiwanese literature.
For the purpose of "understanding Taiwan," China's Xiamen University has expanded its Institute of Taiwan Studies (now called the College of Taiwan Studies) and is now subdivided into five institutes: Taiwanese politics, economics, history, literature, and cross-strait relations. Politicians here may not realize their political networks, interpersonal communications and social relationship are of interest to Chinese researchers. China even conducts "studies" into the daily travel habits of all Taiwan's military officers with the rank of colonel and above.
With this kind of interconnection of culture, and education, why bother with any further plan to "increase cross-strait cultural and educational exchanges?" In recent years, there has been a substantial migration of Taiwanese students to China, and many Taiwanese professors have also been eager to teach in China.
Thus, voices calling for the recognition of Chinese university diplomas are becoming louder, so the reason why the MOE has opened the doors to Chinese students is clear. With such a trend already occurring, why would Wu still want to pave the way for recognizing diplomas granted by Chinese universities?
When former president Lee Teng-hui (
After the Tiananmen Square Massacre, many Chinese officials believed that "safeguarding national integrity" would best be served by restoring military training courses in college, middle schools, and even elementary schools. While receiving this kind of training in the past, the young had to wear military uniforms, sing songs about the People's Liberation Army and adorn themselves with red scarves to signify fresh blood of China's revolutionary heros -- all to pay homage to the Chinese Communist Party.
The offspring of Taiwanese business people living in China would therefore be required to receive this kind of training. University undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students in China are already required to study Marxism, the philosophy of Deng Xiaoping (
Many conservative university presidents here think there is no need for the MOE to insist on the principle of "bilateral equality and dignity." They also think it harmless to withdraw the word, "national," from a university's title in order to gain favor with Chinese universities. The notion that achieving a "consensus" on cross-strait exchange issues will eliminate the need for formal independence is taken for granted by Taiwanese university presidents.
Thus, Wu will be applauded by the Chinese government and Chinese living in Taiwan if he grants Chinese students permiss-ion to attend university here.
Slowly, and in small increments, government policy is taking us down a path headed to de facto unification. Because our economy is relatively small, it is necessary to boost our tourist industry by getting the Chinese to visit Taiwan. A low birth rate has resulted in an insufficient enrollment rate in the nation's 60 universities and many think we need to start attracting some of the 8 million Chinese students here to fill the gap. All of these steps will put us on a slippery slope that will lead to reunification.
The Southern Taiwan Society is an organization that promotes formal sovereignty for Taiwan. The Union of Taiwanese Teachers is a group which seeks to foster independent thinking and judgement.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS