Hsiuping Institute of Technology in Taichung County came under fire yesterday after taking down the national flag and a portrait of Sun Yat-sen (孫中山) in an apparent gesture to welcome guests from China.
Minister of Education Tu Cheng-sheng (杜正勝) yesterday denounced the school as setting a bad example for students and the general public.
"Any international academic exchange with China should be based on the premise of mutual respect. As an educational institute, the school succumbed to pressure from China and humiliated our national pride. It set a bad example for the school's students, and seriously damaged Taiwan's reputation," Tu said yesterday.
Tu told the ministry's monthly meeting yesterday afternoon that the ministry's Technology and Vocational Education Department is investigating the case, and the school may face some form of punishment in the future.
According to reports in local Chinese-language media, the Hsiuping Institute of Technology invited an academic exchange group from Shandong University of Technology in China to attend the school's graduation ceremony on June 12. The school allegedly took down the national flag and a portrait of Sun moments before the eight guests from China joined the proceedings.
Some students and their parents have described the removal of the national symbols as a gesture to please the Chinese visitors.
Premier Frank Hsieh (
Hsieh also described the removal as a bad example to be set by an educational institution and called on the education ministry to rectify the matter.
The Hsiuping Institute of Technology yesterday denied that the flag and portrait had been removed as a "goodwill" gesture to the visitors.
"We did not take down the national flag and portrait of Dr. Sun Yat-sen to welcome the representatives from China. We took them down to better display the background setting that had been designed specially for the graduation ceremony," school president Lin Bao-zong (
According to Lin, the graduation ceremony was opened with the singing of the national anthem, followed by bowing to the national flag and a portrait of Sun. The school then removed the flag and portrait in order to change the background setting.
"Taking down the flag and portrait had nothing to do with pleasing the academic exchange group from China, it was done so as not to obscure the ceremony's background setting. We will never damage the reputation of our country, so there must be a misunderstanding," he said.
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology (NKUST) yesterday promised it would increase oversight of use of Chinese in course materials, following a social media outcry over instances of simplified Chinese characters being used, including in a final exam. People on Threads wrote that simplified Chinese characters were used on a final exam and in a textbook for a translation course at the university, while the business card of a professor bore the words: “Taiwan Province, China.” Photographs of the exam, the textbook and the business card were posted with the comments. NKUST said that other members of the faculty did not see
The Taipei City Government yesterday said contractors organizing its New Year’s Eve celebrations would be held responsible after a jumbo screen played a Beijing-ran television channel near the event’s end. An image showing China Central Television (CCTV) Channel 3 being displayed was posted on the social media platform Threads, sparking an outcry on the Internet over Beijing’s alleged political infiltration of the municipal government. A Taipei Department of Information and Tourism spokesman said event workers had made a “grave mistake” and that the Television Broadcasts Satellite (TVBS) group had the contract to operate the screens. The city would apply contractual penalties on TVBS
The Coast Guard Administration (CGA) and Chunghwa Telecom yesterday confirmed that an international undersea cable near Keelung Harbor had been cut by a Chinese ship, the Shunxin-39, a freighter registered in Cameroon. Chunghwa Telecom said the cable had its own backup equipment, and the incident would not affect telecommunications within Taiwan. The CGA said it dispatched a ship under its first fleet after receiving word of the incident and located the Shunxin-39 7 nautical miles (13km) north of Yehliu (野柳) at about 4:40pm on Friday. The CGA demanded that the Shunxin-39 return to seas closer to Keelung Harbor for investigation over the
A new board game set against the backdrop of armed conflict around Taiwan is to be released next month, amid renewed threats from Beijing, inviting players to participate in an imaginary Chinese invasion 20 years from now. China has ramped up military activity close to Taiwan in the past few years, including massing naval forces around the nation. The game, titled 2045, tasks players with navigating the troubles of war using colorful action cards and role-playing as characters involved in operations 10 days before a fictional Chinese invasion of Taiwan. That includes members of the armed forces, Chinese sleeper agents and pro-China politicians
RSS