Taiwan should do more to promote Chinese language, says president

Dec 18, 2010, 15:23 GMT

Taipei - Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou on Saturday said his country should work harder on teaching Chinese to foreigners.

Speaking at an international seminar on Chinese instruction, Ma said Taiwan should send teachers abroad and offer scholarships to foreigners to come to Taiwan to learn the language.

'I always had a dream. That is, we should internationalize our campuses and turn Taiwan into Southeast Asia's centre for international education,' he said.

He also said he hopes Taiwan can play a leading role in preserving the traditional Chinese writing form, which he warned has lost ground to simplified Chinese characters and could disappear altogether.

During the Cold War era, many foreigners had come to Taiwan to learn Chinese while China was closed to the outside world.

That changed with the end of China's cultural revolution in the 1970s. Since 2004 alone, the country has opened some 300 Confucius Institutes in about 100 countries and regions to teach Chinese.

Taiwan now plans to follow suit. The first Taiwan Academy is scheduled to open in Los Angeles early next year to promote Chinese culture and language.

Read more about China

Read more about Taiwan Culture