Although border restrictions and other counter-pandemic measures are still in place, Taiwan has seen 50% more students from Macau and Hong Kong combined studying there since July, reported Taiwan English media Taipei Times.
The news outlet cited Chen Ming-tong, Minister of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council, for disclosing the figure at an Internal Administration Committee meeting of the Legislative Yuan, the lawmaking body of the jurisdiction.
For this year’s figure so far, the Taiwan news outlet cited data from the Entrance Committee for Overseas Chinese Students, the jurisdiction’s administration for university admission for ethnic Chinese residing abroad, which noted that 823 Macau students have applied to a higher education institution in Taiwan.
Comparatively, the actual number of students admitted by a Taiwanese institution who chose to enroll was 644 for this year. When combined with the number of students from Hong Kong, this represents a leap of 47% from last year’s figures.
Macau and Taiwan have close ties with each other. In 2019, Taiwan was the third largest source of tourists in Macau. According to the official data from the government’s Statistics and Census Service, nearly 1.1 million Taiwanese residents visited Macau last year.
Meanwhile, nearly 160,000 Macau residents have traveled to Taiwan for tourism in 2019, meaning that about one in four local residents have participated in tourism activities in Taiwan.
As for students, in 2019, only 751 students from Macau declared on their arrival cards that they were going to Taiwan for educational purposes.
However, since the Covid-19 pandemic broke out earlier this year, ties between Macau and Taiwan have stopped. Despite accepting people from Taiwan, Macau is requiring them to undergo quarantine upon arrival.
Meanwhile, Taiwan is restricting Macau visitors to a minimum level, if not banned unitarily. AL
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