China is courting the international elite. Through lucrative scholarship opportunities, Beijing annually draws in thousands of foreign students and graduates of prestigious schools to complete degrees and leadership programs at Chinese universities. The result is a regular cohort of future leaders in politics and business who are more likely to sympathize with Beijing’s worldview. Meanwhile, Taiwan’s efforts in this area have been comparatively limited. To better compete with China’s knowledge diplomacy and soft power efforts, Taiwan should work to develop new scholarship opportunities to draw in more future leaders from abroad.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te (賴清德) is vocally committed to developing Taiwan’s relationships with other democracies and people-to-people exchanges are essential in building such ties. Semiconductors and Taiwan’s geostrategic importance are critical policy concerns, but they do not win hearts and minds. Increasing the number of influential people from abroad who are living and studying in Taiwan will be critical in building Taiwan’s soft power, or “knowledge diplomacy.” With its myriad strengths as an innovative and resilient democracy, Taiwan has many lessons to offer future leaders—however, it needs to package its educational programs better in order to more effectively employ them as instruments of Taiwan’s soft power.
Comparing Taiwanese and Chinese Scholarship Programs
Taiwan’s current scholarship programs can be inaccessible and clunky. The Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, one of the major language learning scholarships offered by the Taiwanese government, requires participants to pay for flights, accommodation, school fees, and living costs—all before scholarship payments finally begin disbursal some two months into study in Taiwan, depending on the school. The upfront costs are high, the administrative processes are long, and the scholarship does not provide a “full ride” covering all living and academic costs. Other programs consist of generalized funding for study at Taiwanese institutions—instead of being rounded developmental and experiential programs for which a degree is a priority, but not the only point.
Meanwhile, Beijing operates a series of streamlined education mobility programs focused on drawing current and future foreign decision makers to study in China. Seizing on the readily believed narrative that understanding China is integral to business and political success in the 21st century, programs such as the Yenching Scholarship and Schwarzman Scholarship offer enticing academic and leadership training opportunities, with Chinese language tuition and personalized mentorship, boasting a network of more than a thousand “young global leaders.”
In such programs, all expenses are covered—including interview costs—and successful applicants receive a “full ride” covering tuition, living fees, travel, a personal stipend, and even a laptop. Schwarzman is funded by a mix of Chinese state-owned enterprises, philanthropic individuals and foundations, and foreign companies. The program sources candidates from high-ranking schools like Princeton, Oxford, and Yale—people likely to go on to hold influential roles in politics, business, and wider society. It has involved representatives from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, 中國共產黨) since its earliest days, including the foreign influence-focused United Front Work Department.
A major goal of these programs—winning influential foreigners to adopt vocal approval of China—appears to be successful. Many graduates of Schwarzman and Yenching publicly campaign for greater cooperation and stronger ties between China and their own countries. One group of Schwarzman graduates wrote an article calling for American students to “get back to China,” providing nostalgic anecdotes from their time in the country.
In extreme cases, graduates of such programs have been seen to quote Communist Party propaganda narratives almost to a tee. At a conference panel I attended in 2019, a Schwarzman graduate panelist, when asked a question about China’s brutal human rights violations against the Uyghurs, firmly dismissed the matter as “China’s business,” which nobody else should be speaking about. Rather than simply saying that they did not know about the issue or did not feel qualified to comment, the panelist chose instead to parrot the Chinese government’s firm line that the atrocities in Xinjiang are strictly a matter of China’s internal affairs, upon which nobody else has the right to comment.
Certainly, not all participants will do this—generally coming from undergraduate study at well-regarded academic institutions, scholars will have well-developed critical thinking abilities, which a year of studying in China would not necessarily erode. Indeed, there are plenty of cases of Schwarzman scholars openly criticizing the CCP’s human rights record while on the program. Likewise, it is entirely logical that somebody with an interest in China’s culture, politics, and role in the world will have an interest in studying in the country, without necessarily buying into its government’s propaganda. But if even a small number of people are happily repeating CCP-endorsed lines in high-level discussions, then the influence- building efforts of these study programs are bearing results. This is a problem for Taiwan, given that the CCP’s claims to the island are one of its most dangerous narratives.
Image: Thai recipients of a 2024 Huayu Enrichment Scholarship at an orientation session at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Thailand, August 2024. (Image source: TECO Thailand)
Leveraging Taiwan’s Other Strengths through Leadership Programs
In response, Taiwan should redevelop its own leadership programs, aimed at drawing people with policy and business influence from other countries to study in Taiwan. Unlike other existing programs, new scholarships should be streamlined by offering set courses at specific schools, with immersion and learning opportunities that play to Taiwan’s strengths of global tech leadership, traditional Chinese characters, and active civil society organizations, which are leading in critical fields such as countering disinformation. As with Beijing’s initiatives, partnering with international donors and firms would help to deliver a high-quality and professionally-branded program that is global in character and appeal, as well as help bridge the resource differential between Taiwan and China. This should be a “named” scholarship—following the approach of Rhodes, Kennedy and Schwarzman—to aid with branding and name recognition.
One of the benefits of the Schwarzman Scholarship, as a group of alumni writes, is the chance to develop “cultural understanding, language skills and firsthand experiences” in China. Studying in Taiwan, of course, offers many of the same opportunities, in an environment that is more accessible to foreigners. The Taiwanese government is already working to promote the learning of Taiwanese Mandarin overseas. A more streamlined and fully-funded program to learn in Taiwan would be a natural progression of these activities, and would help Taiwan to capitalize on current trends such as the increase in US students looking to study in Taiwan as China continues to lose its appeal.
That said, there would be far wider benefits to a Taiwanese program, besides offering a place to study Mandarin without having to go to China. Taiwan stands on the frontline of the global disinformation war, and bears repeated attacks—largely from CCP-backed disinformation actors—that are intended to erode its democracy and divide its people. Taiwan has repelled these attacks with remarkable success, success which other democracies should be looking to learn from. By developing a leadership program that involves training future democratic leaders in tackling the modern challenges facing democracies, Taiwan could convert these attacks on its democracy into an asset, positioning itself as the place to learn how to fight back against new and emerging challenges to democratic governance.
Lessons such as these mean that other democracies should also be deepening their own exchange initiatives with Taiwan. There has historically been high perceived value in developing an understanding of China by sending students to China through programs such as the US-China Fulbright programs, or the British Council’s Generation UK-China initiatives. Both are examples of outward mobility programs focusing on selecting “high-potential” students to gain a deeper understanding of Chinese culture and language. Much the same result can be achieved through studying in Taiwan, albeit without the first-hand experience of living and working within China’s authoritarian system—which may either be a benefit or an issue, depending on one’s interests and goals.
To compete with a challenger as large and deep-pocketed as China, Taiwan needs influential friends. A refreshed effort to bring potential allies to Taiwan—and to learn about its culture and means of governance—would go a long way toward building long-term international support.
The main point: To compete with China’s scholarship programs, Taiwan should redevelop its own current scholarship and leadership programs through partnerships with international donors. Some positive changes would be: making the programs more cost-inclusive, streamlining them to consist of set courses at specific schools, and focusing them around Taiwan’s strengths—such as Taiwan’s experience in countering disinformation and its global tech leadership.
