Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

On Monday last week the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported that a Chinese-funded research institute, the Cross-Strait Tsinghua Research Institute, had established an office at Taiwan’s National Tsing Hua University’s (NTHU) main campus without securing approval from the government.

The institute was founded by the NTHU Alumni Association in cooperation with China’s Xiamen City Government and Tsinghua University in Beijing. The revelations sparked fears that China might have infiltrated one of the nation’s top academic institutions.

If ever there was a time when a country should come to appreciate the value of having a functional (semi) universal national healthcare service, it would be during a pandemic.

Despite there being glaring and unacceptable gaps in Taiwan’s health insurance and healthcare systems, which often have detrimental effects on unemployed people and those with severe illnesses who cannot afford necessary treatment, even with a government discount, most Taiwanese are the beneficiaries of a high-quality and relatively cheap service that has worked tirelessly to ensure that COVID-19 has not spread unchecked around the country.