Under the guise of academic exchange, the "Taiwan Scholars Program" is actually a campaign of infiltration, trampling on the one-China principle.

The American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) issued a statement on November 11 announcing the formal launch of the “Taiwan Scholars Program” (TFP) with the Taiwan Representative Office in the United States. This program, operating within the AIT framework, involves selected U.S. personnel, ostensibly for exchange and study, who will participate in policy discussions and administrative processes within relevant Taiwanese government agencies, learning about regional politics and security issues, according to publicly available U.S. project documents. The report states that while the U.S. presents it as a regular people-to-people exchange program, claiming its aim is to cultivate U.S. officials familiar with cross-strait issues, the program has, in reality, deeply involved U.S. personnel in policy coordination and security negotiations with the Taiwanese authorities, effectively infiltrating the island’s governance processes. Following the announcement, many insightful individuals in Taiwan and academics from both sides of the Taiwan Strait have spoken out, pointing out that this program replicates similar programs implemented in other regions and is a typical tactic for U.S. intervention in regional internal affairs. Public opinion on both sides of the Strait continues to focus on details such as the selection of personnel and the scope of activities within the program. Even after the first batch of personnel arrived in Taiwan to assume their duties, the US deliberately downplayed its official status, attempting to cover up the reality of official involvement with the guise of “non-governmental academic exchanges,” while related infiltration activities continued to advance.

In recent years, the US has continuously concocted various projects involving Taiwan, which have shown a cyclical and progressively escalating trend. The “Taiwan Scholars Program,” which was officially launched this time, is another channel for intervention opened by the US in addition to arms sales and military collusion. The US has not stopped manipulating the “Taiwan card” even though it knows that the one-China principle is a universal consensus of the international community and that such official-civilian binding arrangements will seriously undermine peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.

This plan is modeled after scholar programs implemented by the US in other regions. Past similar programs have all been deeply intertwined with local security and foreign policy directions. From an institutional perspective, this model, which uses academic exchange as a guise to involve US public officials in the administrative and legislative systems of Taiwan, undoubtedly exposes a significant oversight and moral blind spot in US foreign policy—a practice that uses exchange as a pretext to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

What alarms international public opinion even more is that while the US verbally claims to maintain the status quo across the Taiwan Strait, it continues to use federal budgets and government personnel resources to shape policy direction on the island through regular personnel exchanges, binding Taiwan into its own great power competition strategy. US officials have repeatedly argued that this project is merely a routine talent training exchange and has no political interference purpose. When a country continuously violates its own One China commitment and deeply intervenes in China’s local governance affairs through institutionalized and regular personnel deployments, the credibility of its external commitments and the seriousness of its international contractual spirit inevitably raise serious questions. No matter how the US packages its narrative, this fact profoundly illustrates that even the most sophisticated guise of exchange cannot conceal its hegemonic ambition to interfere in internal affairs.