The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has reportedly asked the Ministry of Education to allow high-school students from Hong Kong and Macau to study in Taiwan, but the ministry has yet to implement the changes it promised last year, sources said yesterday.
The ministry has said it would amend regulations permitting high-school students from the Chinese territories to travel to Taiwan for study.
However, it has not released any information about when the policy would be enacted.
Photo: Reuters
Under current regulations, residents of Hong Kong or Macau must obtain a residency permit to attend a non-tertiary school, while those wishing to attend a standard public high school can only enroll at the National Overseas Chinese Senior High School.
The change would allow students to obtain a student visa to attend any public or private high school in Taiwan.
School principals or board members would also be permitted to serve as legal guardians for students younger than 18.
It has been more than a year since the ministry proposed the changes in December 2019, but it has yet to provide a specific timetable for implementation, the council said.
Considering concerns raised by Hong Kong-based organizations and parents, Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Tai-san (邱太三) has reportedly asked the ministry to speed the process, the sources said.
Meanwhile, an official with knowledge of the matter said that academic exchanges between Taiwan and Hong Kong are expected to drop off as Beijing promotes “patriotic education” in the territory and prosecutes pro-democracy groups.
As freedoms become further eroded in Hong Kong, more people are expected to seek other places to live, they said, calling on the ministry to act soon and allow high schoolers the opportunity to study in Taiwan.
The ministry later yesterday said that it on Aug. 5 last year submitted proposed regulation changes to the Executive Yuan for approval.
The Executive Yuan on Sept. 29 last year sent the draft back to the ministry with recommendations that the ministry conduct more research on the matter, it said.
The ministry said that it also held discussions with the council on Dec. 13, and is polishing terms in the draft as recommended by the Executive Yuan and the council.
Additional reporting by Rachel Lin
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS