A university in Taoyuan earlier this month reported that 12 of its female foreign students had gone missing. They were later found by police in a “call-girl station” in Taipei. The news once again sheds light on the condition of foreign students in Taiwan.
The latest incident is only the tip of the iceberg. More issues should be addressed in university admission procedures. As early as in 2017, it was revealed that Sri Lankan students at University of Kang Ning were duped into working at food factories to pay for tuition.
In 2019, attracted by a New Southbound Policy scholarship program, more than 1,000 students came to study in Taiwan. Upon their arrival, 300 of them were taken by trucks to work in factories under the pretext of participating in internships.
To protect its citizens from forced labor, Indonesia halted educational exchanges with Taiwan. Eight universities were ordered to stop recruiting Indonesian students.
Jakarta’s concern was not groundless. It was discovered that in at least six Taiwanese universities, Indonesian students had to work, not of their free will, in a so-called “intern class.”
Since 2017, with the launch of the New Southbound Policy, the Executive Yuan has promoted collaboration between Taiwan and ASEAN members and other Southeast Asian countries. The exchanges have come in the form of talent training, industrial development, educational investment, cultural communication, tourism and agriculture. The purpose is to establish a new partnership with Southeast Asian countries.
Later, the Ministry of Education created the New Southbound Industry-Academia Collaboration Program, providing universities with a subsidy ranging from NT$1 million to NT$4 million (US$32,583 to US$130,331). Private universities went after the policy in a swarm. As a result, 297 classes were arranged under the program, with universities admitting 11,230 foreign students.
Earlier this year, Collines Mugisha, a Ugandan student who came to Taiwan to study engineering, told the online Taipei-based news site The Reporter that Chung Chou University of Science and Technology in Changhua County failed to offer classes in English for foreign students, and he never received the scholarship the university had promised him.
The Reporter found that 16 Ugandan students were forced to work as factory interns for long hours and low pay. Before long, Philippine students at Kao Yuan University in Kaohsiung also accused the school of using them as cheap labor. They said they were forced to work in factories 40 hours per week, and the work was irrelevant to their studies.
These cases point at some more serious problems with Taiwan’s private universities. The admissions procedures to recruit foreign students and the abuse of their labor are only one of the issues.
Mistreatment and exploitation of foreign students undermine the exchanges between Taiwan and Southeast Asian countries.
International human rights organizations have been monitoring the New Southbound Policy. The US Department of State’s annual Trafficking in Persons Report for last year and this year showed that traffickers in Taiwan have taken advantage of the policy’s relaxed visa requirements, attracting Southeast Asian students and tourists to Taiwan, and subjecting them to forced labor and prostitution.
The admissions procedures for higher education must be critically reviewed and amended, otherwise Taiwan’s universities would become another “KK Park,” notorious for human trafficking.
Tai Po-fen is a professor of sociology at Fu Jen Catholic University.
Translated by Liu Yi-hung
As strategic tensions escalate across the vast Indo-Pacific region, Taiwan has emerged as more than a potential flashpoint. It is the fulcrum upon which the credibility of the evolving American-led strategy of integrated deterrence now rests. How the US and regional powers like Japan respond to Taiwan’s defense, and how credible the deterrent against Chinese aggression proves to be, will profoundly shape the Indo-Pacific security architecture for years to come. A successful defense of Taiwan through strengthened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific would enhance the credibility of the US-led alliance system and underpin America’s global preeminence, while a failure of integrated deterrence would
It is being said every second day: The ongoing recall campaign in Taiwan — where citizens are trying to collect enough signatures to trigger re-elections for a number of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislators — is orchestrated by the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or even President William Lai (賴清德) himself. The KMT makes the claim, and foreign media and analysts repeat it. However, they never show any proof — because there is not any. It is alarming how easily academics, journalists and experts toss around claims that amount to accusing a democratic government of conspiracy — without a shred of evidence. These
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
On Wednesday last week, the Rossiyskaya Gazeta published an article by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) asserting the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) territorial claim over Taiwan effective 1945, predicated upon instruments such as the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Proclamation. The article further contended that this de jure and de facto status was subsequently reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 of 1971. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs promptly issued a statement categorically repudiating these assertions. In addition to the reasons put forward by the ministry, I believe that China’s assertions are open to questions in international