The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday announced a Taiwan-Europe Connectivity Scholarship program to attract more European students to study Mandarin in the nation and advance bilateral relations.
The program aims to fortify Taiwan-Europe ties and encourage local universities to build up English-teaching environments, Department of European Affairs Deputy Director-General Kendra Chen (陳詠韶) told a news briefing in Taipei.
The program echoes the EU’s Europe-Asia Connectivity Strategy and the UK’s Global Britain vision, she said, expressing the hope that academic partnership would foster collaboration in other areas.
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuan, Taipei Times
The umbrella program includes three projects targeting the Czech Republic, Hungary and the UK, Chen said.
In the project targeting the Czech Republic, seven local universities would provide 50 scholarships per year to students from 14 Czech universities, she said, adding that 11 Czech students have enrolled in National Chengchi University and National Sun Yat-sen University.
The project, resulting from Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil’s visit to Taiwan in August last year, was first announced by the ministry in September last year.
In the project targeting Hungary, 11 local universities would provide 30 scholarships per year to students from nine Hungarian universities, Chen said.
In the project targeting the UK, 18 local universities would provide 100 scholarships per year to students from 42 British universities, she said, adding that six British students have enrolled in National Taiwan University.
The 18 local universities are also required to make plans regarding how the British students might assist English teaching or increase interactions with Taiwanese students on campuses, as part of the government’s efforts to make Taiwan fully bilingual by 2030, Chen said.
The Ministry of Education and the British Office Taipei in October last year signed a letter of intent to further bilateral cooperation in English-language education.
The foreign ministry offers subsidies to local universities based on their scholarship quotas, while they should provide a monthly stipend of at least NT$15,000 to each recipient, Chen said.
The recipients are required to take at least one Mandarin-learning course, she added.
The foreign students were isolated for 14 days upon entering Taiwan, followed by seven days of self-health management, in accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’ regulations, she said.
The ministry plans to extend the program to other European countries, especially those that have established representative offices in Taiwan, Chen said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS