Taiwan students decry propaganda exchange

An Fengshan, spokesman for the mainland’s State Council Taiwan Affairs Office

Students from Taiwan have taken to criticizing exchange programs to mainland China and Macau for being merely propaganda aimed at reinforcing thoughts of unification between China and Taiwan, according to a report by the Taipei Times.

A group of former attendees of an inexpensive academic exchange program, which costs about NTD10,000 (MOP2,564), claimed they were dropped into a pro-unification propaganda program. The exchange program included visits to Macau, Beijing and Inner Mongolia.

During their visit to Macau, the students were taken to an exhibition featuring the “successful implementation of the One Country, Two Systems framework.”

While in Macau, they were constantly told about the advantages of the One Country, Two Systems framework.

When the students went to Inner Mongolia, the exchange program’s organizers promoted ethnic unity.

The exchange program also took the students to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office and Beijing’s Taiwan unification office.

Chen Ku-hsiung, president of Taiwan’s National Cheng Kung University, who participated in this program, described the trip to Macau and other mainland cities as irrelevant to academic topics, mostly unification propaganda, as well as a veiled threat toward Taiwanese independence callers.

In Chen’s opinion, the content included in the trips only served to separate the Taiwanese students further from China.

According to Chen, in a meeting with mainland government officials, those Taiwanese students were informed that Beijing would eliminate Taiwan separatists.

Chen said that these attempts to brainwash Taiwanese students into a pro-unification stance would not succeed because, in his opinion, the majority of the Taiwanese students on the exchange program already  had a sense of Taiwanese identity.

However, despite his evaluation, Chen admits that the trips have influenced some Taiwanese students who turned to organizing activities involving mainland China and Taiwan upon their return to the island.

According to a report by Liberty Times Net, China has been offering free or low-cost exchange tours in an attempt to entice university students from Taiwan, especially student leaders of autonomous organizations in colleges and universities, to visit.

These exchange programs vigorously promote the thinking of the Chinese president Xi Jinping, the Belt and Road Initiative, and the One Country, Two Systems policy framework. JZ