Investing in attracting foreign students to study Mandarin in Taiwan and learn the value of the nation would have a positive diplomatic effect, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) official said.
Department of North American Affairs Director-General Douglas Hsu (徐佑典) made the remark in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) more than one year after the US-Taiwan Education Initiative was launched in December 2020.
Within the past year, MOFA, the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Overseas Community Affairs Council launched the Taiwan Huayu Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent Program, and established 16 Mandarin-language centers in the US.
Photo: Screen grab from the Web site of the Harvard Division of Continuing Education
The ministries have also supported the expansion of scholarship programs in Taiwan offered by the US Department of State and Department of Defense.
At the US-Taiwan Education Initiative: Forming Global Partnerships in Education Symposium last year, American Institute in Taiwan Director Sandra Oudkirk said that in the 12 months since the initiative was launched, her office has worked with Taiwanese partners to enhance cooperation and collaboration on international education.
The institute increased its annual appropriation to Fulbright Taiwan to US$1 million, and the program has received funding from MOFA, MOE and the Ministry of Culture, as well as support from universities and local host institutions, she said.
Thousands of students and teachers move between the US and Taiwan every year, Oudkirk said, adding that she hoped the initiative would help more Americans come to Taiwan to study Mandarin, and help Taiwan achieve its bilingual education goal by 2030.
Taiwan and the US have been cooperating in Mandarin-language education for a long time, Hsu said.
In the 1960s, Stanford University opened the Stanford Center at National Taiwan University.
In the center’s more than 30 years, more than 1,300 students from universities such Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton and Yale enrolled in the program, as well as influential businesspeople and politicians, he said.
Due to insufficient funding, Stanford moved the center to China’s Tsinghua University in 1997, Hsu said.
The center has a special place in the hearts of many US professionals who studied in Taiwan at that time, but with the program moving to China, many US-China policy academics studying the language in the late 1990s and 2000s lacked Taiwan experience, he said.
Although Taipei recognized the seriousness of the problem, it did not have a chance to change the situation until the US in the past few years started raising concerns over Beijing’s Confucius Institutes and suspended its Fulbright program in China and Hong Kong, he said.
Taiwan “saw this as an opportunity,” Hsu said, adding that the US government also showed interest in enhancing cooperation, so new Chinese-language education programs were launched.
An indication of the trend of Taiwan-US cooperation in Mandarin education was when Harvard University relocated its Harvard Beijing Academy — a summer study abroad program — to Taipei, changing its name to Harvard Taipei Academy last year, he said.
The US-Taiwan Education Initiative connects the nations’ governments, with the involvement of the MOE and the US Department of Education, and the two sides are cooperating to expand the framework, Hsu said.
For example, the state department’s Critical Language Scholarship, Gilman Scholarship Program and National Security Language Initiative for Youth program, as well as similar programs from the Pentagon, already have quotas for people to study in Taiwan, but Taipei is increasing funding to support the programs, allowing more people to study in Taiwan, he said.
“Of course, our model is not the same as the Confucius Institutes,” Hsu said, adding that the Beijing initiative has its own agenda.
Taiwan is setting up a platform with the US government, then allowing the schools to negotiate and propose their own programs, while the government provides key investment and support, he said.
Hopefully universities in the US can see Taiwan as a trustworthy partner without “hidden agendas,” he added.
When the ministries started pushing the language programs, they invited many overseas Mandarin teachers to their meetings, consulting them on their experiences in teaching abroad, to understand the actual challenges they face and their needs, he said.
Teachers suggested that the government set up an overseas Chinese teachers’ support network, with the Overseas Community Affairs Council’s Mandarin language centers serving that purpose, he said, adding that they also suggested that programs provide more opportunities for students to study in Taiwan, interact with Taiwanese and make friends.
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