Mainland Affairs Council Minister Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) yesterday urged Taiwanese academics and students to be cautious before going on trips to China, after a National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) professor was criticized for taking a group of students to China in an “academic exchange.”
Jou Jwo-huei (周卓煇), a material sciences professor, led a group of 28 students from NTHU and Shu Guang Senior Girls’ High School in Hsinchu City on a five-day trip to Tianjin, China.
The visit, which started on March 29, was advertised as an academic exchange on “light and health,” a person posting online as “Little Woman of Silicon Valley” (矽谷小婦人) wrote.
Photo from Facebook
The poster said that a friend, whose daughter attends Shu Guang High School, forwarded her a notice from the school that said students would only have to pay for airfare, while accommodation, meals, transportation and other tour expenses were paid for.
The commenter said the trip appeared to be the kind of “united front” event the Chinese government would fund and disguise as an “academic exchange” to influence Taiwanese academics and students.
“My friend’s daughter is young, yet she went on a trip to China that was likely to brainwash her, by showing the nice parts of China” to make her more susceptible to Chinese political influence, the commenter said.
Jou on Monday defended the trip, saying that students visited tourist sites in Tianjin and that schools did not provide funding for the trip, nor did they in a 2023 academic exchange.
“My research has focused on light and its effects on health for many years,” Jou said.
“This time, the exchange was with an optometry hospital in Tianjin, during which we presented papers at a forum. The high schoolers were all willing to pay their own expenses to join this trip, so they could participate in the forum to present their research,” he said.
Speaking on the sidelines of a Legislative Yuan session yesterday, Chiu said that China’s past friendliness to Taiwan does not apply to the present, and that academics and students should be cautious about trips to China.
People involved in exchanges with China should be mindful to preserve their dignity, maintain healthy and orderly cross-strait relations, and be aware of the image their event would project at home and abroad, he said.
Universities should register academic exchanges or events abroad on the Ministry of Education’s platform to protect the safety of students and faculty, he said.
Additional reporting by Lin Che-yuan
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS