In a country where the population growth rate is less than 1% and 70% of people are over the age of 25, setting up strategies to secure a fresh flow of skilled labour will be crucial to its future success. Beckie Smith looks at how Taiwan's New Southbound Policy will use international higher education to do just that.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Education has announced a three-year, multi-million dollar program of higher education internationalisation initiatives as part of its New Southbound Policy.

The so-called overseas Chinese, they may not speak Mandarin but because their parents are from China they like to send their students to Taiwan

Asia's educational diplomacy amid rising nationalism in the west was a key theme throughout the 2017 APAIE conference where one official said "the centre of gravity in higher education if shifting to Asia".

Taiwan's Ministry of Education has announced plans to boost the number of foreign students by 30,000 by 2019, under the government’s new policy to further foster local talent and deepen ties with neighbouring countries.

Taiwan's new president, Tsai Ing-Wen, assumed office last month, and educators have said it may be beneficial to downsize the country’s higher education offering, improve relations with China and attract more overseas students.

In a decade, demand for learning Mandarin has expanded significantly, with a wide range of providers catering for leisure, business or academic students in the country. Not only are there many choices in China, but neighbouring Taiwan and Hong Kong are also becoming emerging destinations for Sinophiles.

Discussions at EAIE last week revealed English medium instruction may be helping Asian universities improve their rankings, but students and professors alike say it's not always an improvement to learning and teaching methods.