China has always used its relative economic advantage to attract investment from Taiwanese industry and to purchase a lot of Taiwanese products. If this were treated as normal foreign direct investment and trade exchanges, there would be nothing wrong with it.
However, industrial relocation to China has caused an outflow of Taiwan’s technology. China often lures Taiwanese companies by promising to make purchases without later placing orders, and this is creating problems for local industry that relies heavily on the Chinese market.
This phenomenon has started to spill over into the world of academia. Exchanges between Taiwan’s and China’s academic circles are nothing new. Some Taiwanese academics travel more frequently to Beijing, Nanjing or Shanghai than to Kaohsiung or Taichung.
After having influenced a large number of Taiwanese academics, China has switched its focus to Taiwanese university students. In recent years, private Chinese companies and government agencies have offered opportunities for so-called “internships” to Taiwanese university students during winter and summer vacations, furnishing free transportation, accommodation and even allowances. Under the banner of cross-strait exchanges and broadening horizens, some students chase after these schemes like flocks of ducks.
Meanwhile, some Chinese academics are submitting papers to Taiwanese journals in an attempt to “exchange views.” I am the editor-in-chief of a Taiwanese journal, and it has received submissions from several Chinese academics in recent months.
However, their papers are all written using simplified Chinese characters and they fail to follow the journal’s writing format and style. Furthermore, some papers begin with the words: “Our country.” Based on the concept that academic exchange transcends borders, the journal has asked submitters to change the simplified Chinese to traditional Chinese characters, revise the text to meet the requirements of our journal’s format and change “our country” to “China.”
The response from academics in China is that their papers conform with international standards and follow the “national format.” Some said that they did not know how to change the format and asked us to do it for them.
We courteously replied that there is no international standard for such publications, and that we were not sure which country they referred to when they said that they followed the “national format.” We also told them clearly that if they did not change the format, we would not submit their papers for review.
Domestically published articles that contain the term “our country” clearly refer to Taiwan, and it is clear that the intention of these Chinese academics is to conflate Taiwan with China in order to confuse readers. If Taiwanese journals publish these kind of papers, the nation will soon turn into a Chinese province without even realizing it.
Who has distorted academic exchanges with their arrogant attitude? Who has allowed academic exchanges to take on political overtones? Who has pushed talented Taiwanese to China, while then complaining about the outflow of local talent?
Through such deification, Taiwanese politicians have placed themselves above the gods in temples, chapels and churches, while politically influential businesspeople calculate the rate of return of their political donations and distribute the products of their tainted and inferior brands. Do you really know what you all are doing?
Wu Pei-ing is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at National Taiwan University.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS