U.S.-Taiwan Academic Partnerships Are Exploding. Here’s Why

Seemingly every other month, headlines tell of a new education partnership between the U.S. and Taiwan.

In July, Arizona State University launched an initiative to help train Taiwanese tech professionals. In September, Middlebury College announced a new immersive language program at Kaohsiung’s National Sun Yat-sen University, set to begin in 2024. And in November, Dartmouth College piloted a study abroad program for graduate business students that spanned several cities in Taiwan.

While the U.S. and Taiwan have long been close education partners, recent years have brought a flood of new initiatives and the expansion of existing ones. There’s a number of reasons for that, experts said: Rising tensions between the U.S. and China are causing some programs to relocate to Taiwan. The ongoing campaign to bring more Taiwanese semiconductor companies to the U.S. is catalyzing an array of academic collaborations. And a growing global interest in Taiwan is causing Taiwan studies to evolve into a standalone field in its own right.

Using education as a soft-power strategy isn’t new or unique to Taiwan.

“Language and culture used as soft power has been a project as long as, I dare say, human civilizations,” said Richard Haddock, a doctoral researcher in U.S.-Taiwan affairs.

But the past few years, in particular, have brought the importance of U.S.-Taiwan educational partnerships into focus and set a new wave of them in motion.

As U.S.-China Relationship Deteriorates, Taiwan Has Become a ‘Proxy’

As U.S.-China relations have turned cold, Taiwan has quickly become a warm and welcoming alternative for American universities looking to send students abroad.

In 2021, Harvard University made national news for its decision to move a longstanding Chinese-language program from Beijing to Taipei. The move, which the Harvard program director told The Harvard Crimson was due to “a lack of perceived friendliness from the host institution,” exemplified a more widespread deterioration of educational and cultural cooperation between the U.S. and China.

China’s COVID-19 border restrictions also almost certainly played a role in its decline as a study abroad destination. During the 2021-2022 school year, only 211 American students studied in China, while Taiwan hosted more than twice that number, according to survey data from the U.S. Department of State. While both enrollment numbers are lower than pre-pandemic years, China’s is massively so: As many as 14,000 American students studied there annually before 2019.

Although relationships with China are not at a high point, American universities still believe studying “Chinese-style” business is important, said Ravi Raj, founder and CEO of Authentica, the study abroad company behind Dartmouth’s new program.

“They find Taiwan to be safe and — you know, almost like a proxy to visiting China, although it’s not exactly a proxy,” Raj said.

‘All of This Started With TSMC’: Semiconductor Industry Drives New Programs

While geopolitical tensions are pushing students away from China, the promise of a flourishing domestic semiconductor industry is pulling U.S. students to Taiwan and vice versa.

The University of Washington, in partnership with National Taiwan University, is set to launch a semiconductor-focused study abroad program in Taipei this summer, promising students “insights into the world’s most critical technology and industry,” according to its website.

And last year, ASU’s Thunderbird School of Global Management announced its “Taiwan Going Global Initiative,” a partnership with Soochow University and the StanShih Foundation that will provide executive training for Taiwanese technology companies that are looking to expand internationally.

ASU’s program is being launched as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s leading chipmaker, builds a $40 billion hub in north Phoenix, less than a 30-minute drive away.

“All of this started with TSMC … setting up shop in Arizona,” said Helen Wu, Thunderbird’s senior director of global partnerships and operations.

In general, more Taiwanese students have already started arriving at ASU. The school’s Taiwanese enrollment more than doubled between 2020 and 2023, jumping from fewer than 200 students to more than 400, said Grace O’Sullivan, ASU’s vice president of corporate engagement and strategic partnerships. She called the increase a “ripple effect” of TSMC’s Arizona expansion.

U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative Establishes Closer Education, Geopolitical Ties

The current geopolitical situation is driving both the U.S. and Taiwan to invest more in developing globalized workforces and building closer political ties, experts said.

In 2020, Washington and Taipei launched the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative, which seeks to expand opportunities for U.S. students to study Mandarin and for Taiwanese students to study English. The initiative goes hand-in-hand with Taiwan’s Bilingual 2030 policy, aimed at boosting young people’s English skills and making them more “globally competitive,” according to Taiwan’s National Development Council.

In roughly its first two years, the U.S.-Taiwan Education Initiative facilitated an impressive amount of investment. The Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs committed $1.8 million to increase funding to three key exchange programs. The Fulbright English Teaching Assistant program, which sends recent U.S. college graduates to Taiwan to teach English, continued to grow its numbers. And Taiwan opened more than 50 Mandarin language centers across the U.S. with plans to open dozens more, filling what some say is a void created by the widespread closure of China-backed Confucius Institutes that used to dominate Mandarin language study at U.S. universities.

“At a government level, both Taiwan and U.S. governments are eager for more cooperation (the latter now meeting long pent up demand from the former),” James Lin, a historian of Taiwan and assistant professor at the University of Washington, said via email.

Taiwan Studies as Growing Field of Scholarship

In the past, when Taiwan appeared in American school curriculums — if at all — it was often within the context of China or Asia more broadly.

But in recent years, Taiwan studies has begun gaining momentum as a field of study on its own, both in the U.S. and Europe, experts said.

At least five American universities, including the University of Washington, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of California San Diego, now have centers specifically dedicated to Taiwan studies. Other schools have begun to establish more classes and programming focused on Taiwanese history, culture and politics.

Many of the new initiatives were brought about by significant donations. The UC San Diego Center for Taiwan Studies, for example, was established last year after the university received a $5 million donation from a Taiwanese alumnus and his wife.

While Taiwan studies has gradually gained popularity over the past few decades, U.S.-based programs in particular have expanded rapidly in the past five or six years, said Dafydd Fell, director of The Centre of Taiwan Studies at SOAS University of London.

Students are very interested in Taiwan right now, he said, thanks to the global attention it has been receiving not only about the current geopolitical situation but also its recent presidential election, its 2019 decision to legalize same-sex marriage and more.

“When you do Taiwan studies, you’ve got to have some good stories to tell. And I think Taiwan has some really good stories,” Fell said.