Written by Chiao-Yuan Jo Ko
Image credit: Taiwan University Entrance Committee for Overseas Compatriot Students, ‘OUR HISTORY.’ This archival document records a 1996 meeting of the Overseas Chinese student admission committee in Taiwan, illustrating the collaboration between the Ministry of Education, the Overseas Community Affairs Council, and participating universities.
In Taiwan, the term ‘overseas Chinese student’ (Qiaosheng 僑生) is widely used, often without much reflection. It typically refers to ethnic Chinese students from Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, and Macau. Yet this seemingly straightforward label has long been the subject of debate, particularly regarding the perception that these students benefit from preferential admission policies. Such discussions continue to surface in public discourse and on social media, even as some earlier privileges have faded.
Beyond these recurring debates lies a more fundamental question: why does Taiwan have a separate educational system specifically for ‘overseas Chinese students’ at all? Unlike most countries, where higher education systems distinguish simply between domestic and international students, Taiwan has developed a more layered structure. Broadly speaking, international students—sometimes referred to as ‘overseas students’ in Mandarin—can enter Taiwanese universities through two main routes: as ‘overseas Chinese students’ (including those from Hong Kong and Macau), or as ‘foreign students’ (Ministry of Education Department of Statistics). These categories are more than labels. Overseas Chinese students are typically admitted through an examination system similar to that for local students and pay comparable tuition fees, whereas foreign students apply directly to universities and are charged higher fees (for instance, National Taiwan University’s overseas student admissions information reflects this distinction).
When people in Taiwan talk about ‘overseas Chinese students,’ they are often referring to students from Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Macau. Historically, these groups have accounted for the largest share of students within this enrolment system (Lee, 1997), and they remain significant today. For instance, Malaysian nationals have recently become one of the largest groups of foreign professionals working in Taiwan, while Hong Kong has consistently ranked among the top five sources, as reported by The News Lens and the Central News Agency. Yet the labels used to describe them are far from clear. Official statistics and institutional practices rely on overlapping terms—‘international students,’ ‘overseas students,’ ‘overseas Chinese students,’ and ‘foreign students’ or ‘foreign workers’—without always clearly distinguishing between them. Rather than a clear system, these labels often overlap and blur into one another.
This confusion is not accidental. It reflects Taiwan’s history and politics. These labels also tell a wider story about Taiwan’s changing relationship with China and the wider world.
To understand this system, we need to look beyond contemporary university policy and back to the political circumstances that formed it. Instead, it grew out of the Republic of China (ROC)’s efforts to shore up its claims to legitimacy after retreating to Taiwan and imposing its rule over the island in 1949. Cold War geopolitics, together with substantial support from the United States (US), helped turn that ambition into a functioning system.
Taiwan’s overseas Chinese student project is often presented as a post-war policy that emerged in the 1950s. Yet official accounts frequently trace it back to 1912, linking it to the ROC’s earlier efforts to maintain ties with overseas Chinese communities. This places Taiwan’s later policy within a much longer story of Chinese nation-building. That history shaped what the category came to mean. Following the founding of the ROC in 1912, nationality law was based largely on ancestry. Ethnic Chinese communities living abroad were not treated as foreigners but as members of the nation residing elsewhere. The label ‘overseas Chinese student’ was never neutral. It reflected a political view of who counted as part of the nation.
That logic did not disappear after 1949. After retreating to Taiwan, the ROC government continued to view overseas Chinese populations as part of a wider national community. Education became one of the main ways to keep those ties alive. Students who arrived in Taiwan through this system were not seen as studying abroad in the usual sense; they were framed as ‘returning’ to the nation. Before the 1990s, this status also came with obligations. Overseas Chinese students were required to join military training and state-organised programmes, suggesting they were treated as more than ordinary students (Wu, 2010). Education was therefore not only about study. It was also a way of maintaining political ties.
This system only makes sense in the context of the Cold War. In the difficult years after the war, the ROC government, led by the Chinese Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT), faced severe shortages of money and resources. Yet between 1954 and 1965, it received substantial US aid, which played a major role in reshaping Taiwan’s education system. That support was driven by changing Cold War priorities. Following the Korean War, the US shifted its strategic focus towards the Asia-Pacific, and Taiwan became increasingly important within Washington’s efforts to contain communism. Cast as ‘Free China’ in opposition to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan became important within the Cold War order, both strategically and symbolically, while also serving as the ROC’s main base for claiming to be the ‘true’ China.
Recruiting overseas Chinese students was not just about education. It was also part of a broader Cold War strategy. Travel subsidies, scholarships, and preferential admissions, supported in part by US aid, made it easier for students from Southeast Asia to ‘return’ to Taiwan and study. Hong Kong and Macau were later added as well. US aid also helped Taiwan’s universities grow, especially leading institutions, which gained resources and grew quickly at the time (Wong 2016). At a time when many local students still had limited opportunities, Taiwan offered overseas Chinese students a rare route to higher education and better prospects.
This system grew under authoritarian rule. During 38 years of martial law, the ROC expanded higher education and broadened its international links while maintaining tight political control at home. Yet its place within the US-led ‘free world’ continued to bring political and financial support. This, in turn, allowed the government to sustain both its education policies and its wider political claims. Even after US aid ended in 1965, the overseas Chinese student system continued to grow in the years that followed, while new funding schemes introduced in the 1970s encouraged further expansion. Together, these measures helped drive a steady rise in the number of overseas Chinese students in Taiwan. More recently, research based on archives and oral histories has drawn renewed attention to the experiences of Malaysian Chinese students during this period—including political surveillance, uncertain status, and in some cases, state repression—as shown in recent books published by Taiwanese publishers, such as Lies and Truths (謊言．真相：陳欽生生命故事) in 2025 and The Original Sin of Bloodline (血統的原罪) in 2020.
The world that once sustained Taiwan’s overseas Chinese student system, however, has changed significantly since the late Cold War. Across Southeast Asia, former colonies became independent states. Malaya (later Malaysia), for instance, gained independence from Britain in 1957 before Malaysia was formed in 1963. In East Asia, Hong Kong and Macau were transferred to Chinese sovereignty in 1997 and 1999. As the region changed, the old label began to seem increasingly out of place.
Taiwan was changing too. In the 1990s, democratisation placed growing pressure on older institutions. At the same time, Taiwan began—gradually and unevenly—to move away from a broader ‘Greater China’ outlook. Under former President Lee Teng-hui, this shift took shape through policies such as the ‘Go South’ initiative in 1994 and, later, his ‘two-state’ theory in 1999. Ethnic Chinese students from Southeast Asia were gradually allowed to apply through the foreign student route in 1998. This shift is discussed in Heading North to Taiwan (北漂台灣), a book published in 2022 in Taiwan that recounts the migration stories of Malaysian students studying in Taiwan in search of self-realisation over several decades. Students from Hong Kong and Macau were recognised as a separate category, but in practice still had to apply through the overseas Chinese student route. Their position remained unclear and politically sensitive, partly because Taiwan still operates under the ROC framework. These reforms softened some tensions, but did not resolve them.
Following Taiwan’s first democratic transfer of power in 2000, long-standing tensions within the overseas Chinese student system became harder to ignore. After the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which placed greater emphasis on Taiwan’s distinct identity, came to office, the government revised the nationality law and rolled back older rules that had treated many overseas Chinese communities as nationals of the ROC. The move also drew criticism from parts of the established overseas Chinese community (傳統海外僑社). In part because of this resistance, the old system survived. The Overseas Community Affairs Council—an institution whose roots stretched back to earlier Chinese state structures—continued to operate much as before, and the category of ‘overseas Chinese student’ remained in place. People from Hong Kong and Macau, along with others recognised as being of Chinese heritage (華人), could still apply through this route.
In practice, the system still exists today as a separate route within Taiwan’s higher education system. The overt political language of earlier decades has largely faded, yet the system still survives through practical advantages such as lower tuition fees for non-local students, reduced scholarship support, and reserved university places. But that does not mean the politics behind it have disappeared. Earlier slogans such as ‘once an overseas Chinese student, always an overseas Chinese student’ (一日僑生，終身僑生) can still be felt in the rules governing the higher education system in Taiwan (for example, in the admissions guidelines issued by Minghsin University of Science and Technology). Students who are admitted through this route, for example, usually cannot change their status to that of foreign students while enrolled. These labels still carry practical consequences. Names, however, are only part of the story. Once graduates move into immigration pathways, Malaysians are generally treated under rules similar to those applied to other foreign nationals. Students from Hong Kong and Macau, by contrast, remain in a particularly unclear position.
The system is therefore more than a relic of the past. It still shapes how people are classified and the routes through which they enter Taiwan today. It also points to a larger question still being worked out: how Taiwan sees itself and how much of its political past continues to influence the present.
Chiao-Yuan Jo Ko is a PhD student in the Department of Geography at University College London (UCL). Their research explores how Taiwan has become a key site of international student mobility in East and Southeast Asia, with a current focus on Hong Kong and Malaysian Chinese communities. Drawing on political geography, they examine how Cold War legacies and overlapping imperial histories continue to shape mobility and lived experience. Originally trained in sociology and the sociology of education, they now think and write through the lens of political geography.
This article was published as part of the special issue on “Plural Education within Taiwan and Beyond“.