The monthly subsidies given to Chinese graduate students that have a caused a furor were originally intended for democracy activists and were meant to help spur the development of China’s democratic movement, said Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) Chairman Huang Kun-huei (黃昆輝), one of the original architects of the plan.
The subsidies, which are given to Chinese graduate students to study in Taiwan for up to two months each on a selective basis, attracted attention recently after political talk show host Cheng Hung-yi (鄭弘儀) used expletives to describe the plan at a rally hosted by pro-localization groups over the weekend.
The outburst led to finger-pointing by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), with the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) issuing a statement saying the policy had been in place since the DPP administration under former president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁).
DPP politicians countered that the policy was initiated during the KMT administration under former president Lee Teng-hui (李登輝).
Huang, a former MAC chairman under Lee’s administration, acknowledged that the plan was initiated under his watch, but said it was directed at Chinese political activists with the ultimate goal of helping set up a pro-democracy network in China at the time.
“When this policy was initiated, the times were much different than today,” Huang said in a statement. “At the time, after the Tiananmen Massacre ... many Chinese democracy activists escaped to study overseas.”
“The fund was created to encourage them to set up a Chinese democracy movement. All of the applicants [at the time] were overseas Chinese students,” he added.
Official documents show that the Chinese Development Fund, the organization that hands out the subsidies, was established by the council in 1994. The subsidies targeting Chinese graduate students were established a year later, when Vice President Vincent Siew (蕭萬長) served as MAC chairman.
Huang said the policy should have been reevaluated following China’s economic rise and the current administration’s decision to open the nation’s borders to regular Chinese students.
“[It] isn’t right” that the policy had been allowed to continue until now, he said.
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