President Ma Ying-jeou met with Professor William Kirby, Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, on the morning of April 26 at the Presidential Office. The president expressed a warm welcome to Professor Kirby on his visit to Taiwan.
The president remarked that Professor Kirby recently arranged a video conference for him to deliver an address entitled The Quest for Modernity to Harvard students and faculty on April 6 Taipei time. The president said that the address was a summary of relations among Harvard, mainland China, and Taiwan over the past several decades, and it also examined the process of modernization on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. In the address he mentioned various challenges, setbacks, and achievements, described trends in the cross-strait relationship in recent years, and discussed the pursuit of wealth, freedom, and democracy.
President Ma commented that Professor Kirby is an expert on the history of the Republic of China, and has focused especially on the ROC-Germany relations prior to World War II. The president stated that Professor Kirby is also a well-known chair lecturer at Harvard, where he enjoys an outstanding reputation. Professor Kirby is meeting with counterparts in Taiwan's academia during this visit to Taiwan, and the government would also like to have more contact and cooperation with America's academic sector to bolster Taiwan's visibility in the international academic community.
President Ma said that in recent years the number of Taiwan students studying in the United States has stood at about 28,000. This is quite a bit fewer than 30 years ago, and he said that the reason for this is that a portion of students here now opt to go to the UK or Australia instead. The president said he hopes that a greater number of Taiwan students will study at America's top universities. This would be enormously beneficial both in expanding the horizons of these students and helping to establish greater contacts between the two countries, he said.
Professor Kirby expressed his appreciation to President Ma for meeting with him. He added that President Ma's video conference was an extremely positive experience and that it made a deep impression on Harvard's students and faculty. He said that during his tenure at the Academia Sinica, he had deep admiration for the openness within Taiwan's academic sector. Professor Kirby added that he hopes to see even more opportunities for interaction between the two sides.
Professor Kirby was accompanied to the Presidential Office in the morning by Vice Foreign Minister Lyushun Shen to meet with President Ma. Also in attendance was National Security Council Secretary-General Hu Wei-jen.