Delivering Huayu education to the world
To develop Taiwan into a bastion of Mandarin education, the MOE and OCAC are working together to promote Huayu studies to the world.
In August 2022, the MOE commissioned the Taiwan Mandarin Educational Resources Center to pursue interagency collaboration to integrate the resources of nearly 90 Huayu educational institutions nationwide, including both Mandarin study centers and university departments of applied Chinese.
As for how to attract people from around the globe to come and study Huayu in Taiwan, Taiwan offers a variety of scholarships and programs, such as Chinese language scholarships, the school-to-school Taiwan Huayu BEST–Bilingual Exchanges of Selected Talent Program, and subsidies for short-term study groups.
For example, in 2022, 7,022 students came to study at Mandarin study centers attached to Taiwanese universities, while 100 teachers trained at Chung Yuan Christian University, National Cheng Kung University and Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages were selected as members of groups that were sent to teach Mandarin in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam. This program will be further expanded to other schools and countries in future.
Meanwhile, OCAC’s overseas-based Taiwan Centers for Mandarin Learning formally started operations in 2021, and as of 2023 there are a total of 66 centers, with 54 in the US and 12 in nine European countries. Hsu Chia-ching says that the plan is to bring that number to 100 within four years, including branching out into Oceania and Asia. The main target market for the centers is students aged over 18 whose mother tongue is not Chinese.
When Hsu Chia-ching was in Hamburg, Germany, during a visit to Europe in 2022, she suggested to the Taiwan Center for Mandarin Learning located there that they should offer Mandarin Chinese classes specially for local engineers, because Taiwan is actively developing wind power and many engineers need to come and work in Taiwan for periods of six months to a year. They would find it very useful to learn some Huayu before they travel.
Hsu also visited a factory in Hungary recently set up by Taiwan’s Giant Manufacturing Company, the world’s largest bicycle maker by market share. This is Giant’s second European factory, in addition to its long-established plant in the Netherlands. Most of the workers in the new facility are Eastern Europeans, and overcoming the language barrier has been a big challenge for management. During her visit, which was arranged by Liu Shih-chung, head of the Taipei Representative Office in Budapest, Hsu proposed that an OCAC Mandarin center could provide teachers for the company to offer Chinese language classes for local management personnel, such as human resources managers, as an employee benefit.
“Taiwan has the ability to meet the rising demand for Huayu education,” says Hsu. Besides the demand driven by Taiwan’s economic development and the establishment of overseas factories by Taiwanese firms, the shortage of people skilled in the Chinese language has been growing ever more acute.
Hsu concludes: “Taiwan has built up a great deal of experience, and we are fully prepared. Taiwan can help. If you want to study Mandarin Chinese, look to Taiwan.”
Chinese language teaching materials for students of differing levels.