Mainland Affairs Council Minister Lai Shin-yuan (賴幸媛) yesterday came under fire over inconsistencies in her position on a development fund that became the focus of attention after it was revealed that a certain portion of the fund was given to Chinese students on a selective basis.
The Chinese Development Fund, a non-profit fund created by the council in 1994, was implemented in January 1996 to promote cross-strait relations.
The NT$30,000 (US$1,000) monthly subsidies, which are given to Chinese graduate students to study in Taiwan for up to two months, 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 last weekend.
Lai, who voted in favor of abolishing the fund when she was a Taiwan Solidarity Union (TSU) legislator, said the fund should continue to exist, as it was a good policy to subsidize Chinese students who could help China better understand Taiwan.
However, her position contradicted the council’s decision, which said on Monday that the government would terminate the program following the relaxation of cross-strait policy on education. Although universities will be allowed to recruit students from China starting next year, the administration has said it would not provide those students with subsidies or scholarships.
Lai told the legislature’s Internal Administration Committee she didn’t know much about the subsidy program when she was a TSU legislator and that she just voted according to the party line.
Once she learned more about its implications, she thought it was a good policy and that it should continue, she said, adding that the public had wrong ideas about the program and that “certain media outlets” had done their best to “defame it.”
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Hung Hsiu-chu (洪秀柱) identified the “certain media outlets” as Sanlih E-Television (SET-TV), Formosa TV and the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper), which she nicknamed “San-min-zi,” which sounds similar to the Chinese word for “sandwich.”
Lai said Taiwanese students also received government subsidies.
Statistics released by the council on Wednesday showed that the administration offered an average of NT$800 million in subsidies to Taiwanese students studying abroad and NT$600 million to Taiwanese graduate students every year.
During the budget review, the committee cut the fund by NT$1.6 million, including the NT$1.44 million earmarked for the Chinese student subsidy program next year. The committee also slashed the council’s budget by NT$2.775 million.
Despite the cuts, Lai vowed to forge ahead with the policies, which she said were “good and correct.”
Those policies included subsidizing Chinese artists and journalists, money for which does not come from the fund. Chinese journalists received subsidies of up to NT$120,000 a month to work in Taiwan.
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