Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
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Photo Credit: Ma Ying-jeou/Facebook
A RECENT VISIT to Taiwan by a Chinese student delegation organized by the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation has drawn controversy. The delegation includes several Chinese athletes, such as table tennis player Ma Long, a participant in the Olympics. Namely, the delegation has been protested on a number of occasions. Otherwise, statements by the students provoked public outrage.
One perhaps ill-advised comment by a Chinese student who was part of the delegation celebrated Taiwan’s recent victory in the Premier12 baseball competition, making Taiwan the world champion in baseball–except phrased this as an achievement of the Chinese motherland, which included Taiwan and China. This led to anger at a time when the baseball victory has been celebrated as an object of national pride.
Likewise, protests against the student delegation included at National Taiwan University and Tsinghua University. While some protest slogans called on the Chinese students to get out of Taiwan, for the most part, demonstrators emphasized that they supported exchanges with Chinese students conducted in a free and democratic manner–and that they hoped to conduct exchanges about topics such as the sentencing of the Hong Kong 47 and the treatment of Uyghurs and Tibetans in China. Students held pro-democracy slogans and offered books on democracy to the Chinese students, which they did not take up.
Further outraging was news headlines in Chinese state-run media that referred to Ma Long’s visit to the Zhongshan Girls’ High School in Taipei, using the headline “Tang Seng entering the Silken Web Cave”. As the headline refers to an erotic scene in the Chinese classical novel Journey to the West, this prompted anger from parent groups, who criticized the sexualization of students without their consent.
News reports also indicated that members of the delegation were also all CCP party affiliates. This may not be surprising, seeing as the CCP was likely to only send those with a proven history of loyalty to the party.
This is not the first student exchange conducted by the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation. In April, Ma traveled to China with a student delegation of Taiwanese students, framed as a cross-strait educational exchange. During this trip, Ma met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Ma had previously carried out a trip, also with students, in March 2023.
Photo credit: Ma Ying-jeou/Facebook
Ma has sought to use educational exchanges involving students, then, as a frame for conducting cross-strait exchanges. Ma likely means to use such exchanges as a means of bolstering his standing in the KMT, to maintain his current status in the party as its arbiter of cross-strait position–despite that Ma is not part of the party officialdom, he overshadows party chair Eric Chu on determining the KMT’s cross-strait position at present.
Still, six months after the Bluebird Movement, which drew high schoolers and college students who had not previously participated in social movement mobilizations into the streets, such exchanges are likely to see protest. This proves similar to protests against exchanges conducted with China which framed Taiwan as part of China in the years after the Sunflower Movement, such as in the course of the Sing! China incident, involving the beating of student protestors at the National Taiwan University campus by pro-China gangsters. The students were demonstrating cross-strait exchanges conducted between Taipei and Shanghai under Ko Wen-je’s mayoral administration that framed Taiwan as part of China.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has suggested that the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation has violated laws and may be restricted from inviting Chinese students to Taiwan in the future, on grounds of making political statements under the auspices of cross-strait exchanges, and not submitting the required paperwork for the exchange to occur. As such, the MAC has suggested that the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation may be banned from inviting students from six months to five years, and that future student trips may see vetting of students.
For its part, the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation has accused the MAC of having a “martial law” mentality and suggested that banning students would be tantamount to martial law. The KMT has increasingly leaned into such claims of the DPP after a post from the DPP legislative caucus social media account expressing support for the declaration of martial law in South Korea that was declared then withdrawn several days ago.
The KMT is expected to accuse the DPP of violating freedom of public expression through any action it takes against Chinese student exchanges. Ironically, this takes place at a time when the Chinese government refuses to allow Chinese students to study in Taiwan, even as the Lai administration has called for the resumption of tourism and other exchanges with China.