With the closure of China’s Confucius Institutes in the US, it is time for Taiwan to fill the Mandarin teaching gap and share “a different version of history” with US students, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Director Brent Christensen told the Chinese Language Symposium to Support the US-Taiwan Education Initiative in Taipei yesterday.
“We have all read news stories about the closing of many of the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China] Confucius Institutes in the US. Now is the time for Taiwan to step forward and help fill this gap — not only to teach Mandarin and learn English, but to more fully tell Taiwan’s story to their American students,” Christensen said in Mandarin.
The US Department of State in August last year designated the Confucius Institute US Center as a Chinese “foreign mission” for multifaceted propaganda efforts.
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
After Taiwan and the US last month signed a memorandum of understanding on international education cooperation, both sides have agreed to expand existing programs, including the Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant Program, Christensen said.
Wishing good luck to about 60 program participants who are to teach Mandarin in the US, he told them they play a crucial role in teaching young Americans a language spoken by 1.3 billion native speakers around the world and have the opportunity to tell a different version of history than the one taught at Confucius Institutes.
‘CIVIC AMBASSADORS’
Encouraging Taiwanese instructors to serve as “civic ambassadors” and make more friends, National Security Council (NSC) Deputy Secretary-General Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉) said the government attaches great importance to the program, and the council since May last year has been coordinating inter-agency efforts to make plans to promote Mandarin teaching in the US and Europe.
Many senior US researchers on Chinese affairs had learned Mandarin in Taiwan during or after China’s Cultural Revolution, Department of North American Affairs Director-General Douglas Hsu (徐佑典) said, but added that when Taipei stopped funding the Stanford Center at National Taiwan University and China opened up to the world late last century, many Americans turned to China to learn the language, which resulted in their alienation from Taiwan’s views when addressing cross-strait issues.
As many prestigious universities in the US, including military academies, are establishing Mandarin-teaching departments, Taiwan should take the opportunity to tout its teaching resources online and offline, he added.
In the US, the number of K-12 students learning Mandarin exceeded 400,000 in 2017, doubling from only two years earlier, AIT Deputy Director Raymond Greene said.
US students traditionally chose Spanish as their second language, but more have been opting for Mandarin, he said.
Over the past few years, students and academics have avoided going to China, first due to environmental and then political concerns, as Beijing imposes more totalitarian restrictions on Internet use and the freedom of speech, he said.
Asked if the trend might shift back to Beijing if US-China relations improve, Greene said it is a natural shift for such people to come to Taiwan, adding that the trend would only continue to grow.
FALSE DOCUMENTS? Actor William Liao said he was ‘voluntarily cooperating’ with police after a suspect was accused of helping to produce false medical certificates Police yesterday questioned at least six entertainers amid allegations of evasion of compulsory military service, with Lee Chuan (李銓), a member of boy band Choc7 (超克7), and actor Daniel Chen (陳大天) among those summoned. The New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office in January launched an investigation into a group that was allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified medical documents. Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) has been accused of being one of the group’s clients. As the investigation expanded, investigators at New Taipei City’s Yonghe Precinct said that other entertainers commissioned the group to obtain false documents. The main suspect, a man surnamed
The government is considering polices to increase rental subsidies for people living in social housing who get married and have children, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. During an interview with the Plain Law Movement (法律白話文) podcast, Cho said that housing prices cannot be brought down overnight without affecting banks and mortgages. Therefore, the government is focusing on providing more aid for young people by taking 3 to 5 percent of urban renewal projects and zone expropriations and using that land for social housing, he said. Single people living in social housing who get married and become parents could obtain 50 percent more
DEMOGRAPHICS: Robotics is the most promising answer to looming labor woes, the long-term care system and national contingency response, an official said Taiwan is to launch a five-year plan to boost the robotics industry in a bid to address labor shortages stemming from a declining and aging population, the Executive Yuan said yesterday. The government approved the initiative, dubbed the Smart Robotics Industry Promotion Plan, via executive order, senior officials told a post-Cabinet meeting news conference in Taipei. Taiwan’s population decline would strain the economy and the nation’s ability to care for vulnerable and elderly people, said Peter Hong (洪樂文), who heads the National Science and Technology Council’s (NSTC) Department of Engineering and Technologies. Projections show that the proportion of Taiwanese 65 or older would
Democracies must remain united in the face of a shifting geopolitical landscape, former president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) told the Copenhagen Democracy Summit on Tuesday, while emphasizing the importance of Taiwan’s security to the world. “Taiwan’s security is essential to regional stability and to defending democratic values amid mounting authoritarianism,” Tsai said at the annual forum in the Danish capital. Noting a “new geopolitical landscape” in which global trade and security face “uncertainty and unpredictability,” Tsai said that democracies must remain united and be more committed to building up resilience together in the face of challenges. Resilience “allows us to absorb shocks, adapt under
RSS