Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) eponymous Ma Ying-jeou Foundation spent NT$5 million (US$159,990) to bring 31 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) students and six accompanying CCP personnel to Taiwan for a nine-day exchange visit, arriving on July 15 and leaving on Sunday.
The delegation can fairly be called a CCP group because the 37 participants were selected by China, with Peking University CCP party secretary Hao Ping (郝平) leading the group and all the student participants being members of the Communist Youth League. This trip was not something that ordinary Chinese students had a fair chance of joining.
It was Ma himself who revealed the main purpose of hosting such a visit to Taiwan. He said that when he led a delegation to China in March and April, his initiative was enthusiastically received by several Chinese universities, so he decided to promote similar exchanges. The return visit was therefore a matter of reciprocal courtesy on Ma’s part, rather than the foundation’s lofty claims that it could improve cross-strait relations and further the cause of peace.
Chinese People’s Liberation Army warplanes and ships did not desist from their usual incursions and harassment around Taiwan while the group was visiting. Meanwhile, the delegation spent most of their time on sightseeing tours, with little time devoted to actual exchanges between students from the two sides.
Ma said the visit was the best possible present for his 73rd birthday. If it made Ma happy, good for him, but the meager results gained from an outlay of NT$5 million might not be so pleasing for the foundation’s donors.
There are many examples of this kind of behavior by the CCP, where it takes it upon itself to approve or reject various kinds of cross-strait arrangements. If the normal exchange of students across the Taiwan Strait is what really matters, the Chinese government should reinstate the practice of allowing ordinary Chinese students to study in Taiwan.
In 2011, Taiwan began allowing mainland Chinese students to apply and take entry tests for national research institutes and private universities in Taiwan (the measures did not include students from Hong Kong and Macau, as they could already do so). In 2014, Taiwan further permitted its national universities to enroll up to five Chinese students each, after which it continued to discuss relaxing relevant regulations.
These measures, which were adopted when Ma was president, did not change when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in 2016. However, the following year, the authorities of China’s Fujian Province instructed high schools to handle applications to study in Taiwan with caution, on the grounds that cross-strait relations had deteriorated.
Then, in 2020, the Chinese Ministry of Education formally announced that it was suspending applications for Chinese high-school graduates to study in Taiwan. This policy was presented as a control measure against COVID-19, but it has not been reviewed since then.
Instead, the Chinese authorities shifted their focus to recruiting Taiwanese to pursue further studies in China, which continued even during the three years of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this sense, student “exchanges” have all been in one direction.
If Ma thinks the policy of promoting cross-strait student exchanges is his baby, he could have said more about this more substantial aspect. That way, no one would accuse him of doing it for his own satisfaction.
However, it is a different matter to spend NT$5 million of donors’ money to treat a few privileged model students from the Communist Youth League to enjoy a free trip to Taiwan, while the CCP regime excludes the vast majority of Chinese students from visiting the “forbidden zone” that is Taiwan.
Surely, such an exclusive junket does not comply with the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation’s stated aims.
This kind of manipulation is not only true of the education sector, but also of cross-strait tourism in general. The CCP views cross-straits relations as an extension of its autocratic interests, while Taiwanese pursue them for the sake of culture and civilization.
If cross-strait exchanges cannot serve Taiwan’s interests, at least they should not serve those of the CCP.
Tzou Jiing-wen is editor-in-chief of the Chinese-language Liberty Times, the sister paper of the Taipei Times.
Translated by Julian Clegg
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
For Taiwan, the ongoing US and Israeli strikes on Iranian targets are a warning signal: When a major power stretches the boundaries of self-defense, smaller states feel the tremors first. Taiwan’s security rests on two pillars: US deterrence and the credibility of international law. The first deters coercion from China. The second legitimizes Taiwan’s place in the international community. One is material. The other is moral. Both are indispensable. Under the UN Charter, force is lawful only in response to an armed attack or with UN Security Council authorization. Even pre-emptive self-defense — long debated — requires a demonstrably imminent
Since being re-elected, US President Donald Trump has consistently taken concrete action to counter China and to safeguard the interests of the US and other democratic nations. The attacks on Iran, the earlier capture of deposed of Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and efforts to remove Chinese influence from the Panama Canal all demonstrate that, as tensions with Beijing intensify, Washington has adopted a hardline stance aimed at weakening its power. Iran and Venezuela are important allies and major oil suppliers of China, and the US has effectively decapitated both. The US has continuously strengthened its military presence in the Philippines. Japanese Prime
RSS