Taiwan and the US on Monday reaffirmed their commitment to deepening cooperation in English and Mandarin-language education, with a view to expanding their collaboration to include the sciences.
Deputy Minister of Education Liu Mon-chi (劉孟奇) led a delegation of ministry officials to the fourth high-level dialogue under the Taiwan-US Education Initiative in Washington, the Ministry of Education said in a news release yesterday.
The ministry presented the outcome of bilateral cooperation in Mandarin and bilingual education; exchanges between elementary, junior-high schools and universities; and cultivation of semiconductor talent, it said.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Education
Significant progress in promoting Mandarin education has been made since the last dialogue in February last year, Liu said.
A record 3,080 US students are to come to Taiwan to study Mandarin this year, while the ministry selected 147 Mandarin-language teachers and teaching assistants to teach in the US, he said.
Taiwan provided subsidies to 20 universities in Taiwan and 56 universities in the US to promote quality Mandarin education under the Huayu Best (台灣優華語計畫) program, he said, adding that four Taiwan Centers for Mandarin Learning were established last year.
The University Academic Alliance in Taiwan, consisting of 12 universities in Taiwan, has signed memorandums of understanding with three US university systems for cooperation in the fields of semiconductors, engineering sciences and Mandarin-language education, he said.
Thanking the US government for continuing to support bilingual education in Taiwan by sending professional English teachers, the ministry said it hoped that the two nations could extend the cooperation to cover STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics — education in elementary and junior-high schools.
Also present at the meeting were National Security Council Deputy Secretary-General Hsu Szu-chien (徐斯儉), who joined online, Overseas Community Affairs Council Minister Hsu Chia-ching (徐佳青) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui (俞大?).
On the US side, attendees included US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink, US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Camille Dawson, American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) Chairwoman Laura Rosenberger and AIT Managing Director for the Washington office Ingrid Larson.
After the meeting, the delegation visited the University of Maryland, a partner in the Huayu Best Program, to discuss with university president Darryll Pines plans to provide Mandarin courses focusing on professional fields to US students coming to Taiwan for internships, the ministry said.
The US-Taiwan Education Initiative was launched in 2020 and was expanded last year to allow more young Americans to learn Mandarin in Taiwan, and more Taiwanese Mandarin instructors to teach in the US, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Working with the Foundation for Scholarly Exchange (Fulbright Taiwan), the government is promoting the use of English as the medium of instruction for English-language classes in universities and recruiting more English teaching assistants to meet its Bilingual 2030 policy, it said.
Nvidia Corp yesterday unveiled its new high-speed interconnect technology, NVLink Fusion, with Taiwanese application-specific IC (ASIC) designers Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯) and MediaTek Inc (聯發科) among the first to adopt the technology to help build semi-custom artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure for hyperscalers. Nvidia has opened its technology to outside users, as hyperscalers and cloud service providers are building their own cost-effective AI chips, or accelerators, used in AI servers by leveraging ASIC firms’ designing capabilities to reduce their dependence on Nvidia. Previously, NVLink technology was only available for Nvidia’s own AI platform. “NVLink Fusion opens Nvidia’s AI platform and rich ecosystem for
WARNING: From Jan. 1 last year to the end of last month, 89 Taiwanese have gone missing or been detained in China, the MAC said, urging people to carefully consider travel to China Lax enforcement had made virtually moot regulations banning civil servants from making unauthorized visits to China, the Control Yuan said yesterday. Several agencies allowed personnel to travel to China after they submitted explanations for the trip written using artificial intelligence or provided no reason at all, the Control Yuan said in a statement, following an investigation headed by Control Yuan member Lin Wen-cheng (林文程). The probe identified 318 civil servants who traveled to China without permission in the past 10 years, but the true number could be close to 1,000, the Control Yuan said. The public employees investigated were not engaged in national
CAUSE AND EFFECT: China’s policies prompted the US to increase its presence in the Indo-Pacific, and Beijing should consider if this outcome is in its best interests, Lai said China has been escalating its military and political pressure on Taiwan for many years, but should reflect on this strategy and think about what is really in its best interest, President William Lai (賴清德) said. Lai made the remark in a YouTube interview with Mindi World News that was broadcast on Saturday, ahead of the first anniversary of his presidential inauguration tomorrow. The US has clearly stated that China is its biggest challenge and threat, with US President Donald Trump and US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth repeatedly saying that the US should increase its forces in the Indo-Pacific region
ALL TOGETHER: Only by including Taiwan can the WHA fully exemplify its commitment to ‘One World for Health,’ the representative offices of eight nations in Taiwan said The representative offices in Taiwan of eight nations yesterday issued a joint statement reiterating their support for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the WHO and for Taipei’s participation as an observer at the World Health Assembly (WHA). The joint statement came as Taiwan has not received an invitation to this year’s WHA, which started yesterday and runs until Tuesday next week. This year’s meeting of the decisionmaking body of the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland, would be the ninth consecutive year Taiwan has been excluded. The eight offices, which reaffirmed their support for Taiwan, are the British Office Taipei, the Australian Office Taipei, the
RSS