English Speaking Politicians in Taiwan
A very large number of prominent officials in Taiwan have been educated overseas. For example, two of the major figures in the upcoming presidential election, James Soong and Lien Chan, speak fluent English. Lien Chan, in fact, has taught at the University of Wisconsin (1965-6). I have seen him interviewed in English on CNN and can testify to the extremely high standard of his spoken English. But Soong and Lien are hardly the only prominent officials who speak excellent English. Others are the mayor of Taipei, Ma Ying-jeou, the mayor of Taichung, Jason Hu. All of these men are members of the Kuomingtang (KMT).
This does not mean that the currently ruling DPP (Democratic Progressive Party) does not have many foreign-educated leaders. Peng Ming-min, who ran for the DPP in the first free presidential election of 1996 has a Ph.D. from McGill University in Canada. The vice-president, Annette Lu, has a masters in law from Harvard. While many of the leaders of the DPP are bilingual in European languages, the image of the party is quite different. In part, the reason stems from the inability of the president, Chen Sui-bien, to speak any foreign languages. I doubt that this is technically correct. Chen is a graduate of the law department of National Taiwan University, and many of the Taiwanese lawyers I have met speak English reasonably well. Even if I am correct, it almost certainly true that his English would be nowhere near as fluent as the KMT officials I referred to above.
Does this matter? In TESOL, there is a widespread opinion that contact with other cultures and languages creates a more liberal, open person. In policy, I doubt that the ability to speak a foreign language has much effect on how an official approaches education. Just look at Taiwan's MOE. Despite the change in government in 2000, the officials at the MOE are pretty much the same people. Many (if not all) of them, have PhDs from foreign schools. This doesn't seem to have helped them create any more enlightening policies.
8:49:04 AM 
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