Taiwan seeks to woo Indian students

KV Prasad in taiwan

Seeking to leverage its strengths in the form of a quality-education provider and as a tourist destination, Taiwan is planning to forge a new and mutually beneficial model of cooperation with Asian countries, including India.

As part of its multi-pronged approach under the new South Bound Policy, the Tsia administration is laying stress on outreach to India in two sectors—attract greater number of students to go beyond the current 1,000-plus and adding more education centres in India.

Having just concluded another ‘Higher Education Exposition’ in Mumbai, Taiwan sees great scope to fill in the demand for affordable and quality education for Indian students. Having forged understanding with six universities in India, including IIT-Chennai and Jamia Millia, Taiwan is now moving to add IIT-Mumbai to the list. Interacting with a visiting group of Indian journalists, Professor Wei-Chung Wang, senior adviser for global affairs in National Tsingh Hua University, said the institution has over 200 students from India.

“Diwali is celebrated on the university and every year the students along with engineers who work in the National Science Park come over to the campus on the occasion”, Profess Hsiao-Wei Chang, responsible for India outreach, said. 

They said students from India have the option of learning Mandarin but courses have English as medium of instruction. Education counsellor-director Julie Chu in the Ministry of Education said a plan for change in law allowing outstanding foreign students to stay back and work in Taiwan is on the anvil. As for tuition fees, it ranges between $2000 and $3,500 in public universities for courses in medicine and engineering.

Meanwhile, faced with the prospect of slowing down of tourists from mainland China, partly due to changing nature of relationships after the advent of the Democratic Progressive Party government, there is an attempt to woo Indian tourists.

Last year, almost 40 per cent of its 10 million tourists were from mainland China but officials admitted the numbers from the country was less this year. The country earned $1.43 billion from tourism last year and the challenge is to keep it at that level. Tourists from Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and Hong Kong, a majority of them Chinese, continue to pour in.

As for India, Ying Hui Cheng, deputy director, International Affairs Division of Tourism Board, said the challenge was to create recall identity of the country as a tourist destination offering lifestyle, culture, natural wonders, adventure theme parks and free wi-fi across the country to keep pace with modern gadget-bound people. Hopes for an increase in numbers from India also increases with the prospect of more direct flights to Taiwan. 

(Concluded)