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The United States will place federal employees inside Taiwan's government offices under a new fellowship programme, the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) said on Wednesday, in a move that deepens practical government-to-government engagement between Washington and Taipei.
Under the Taiwan Fellowship Program, U.S. federal employees will first spend up to a year in intensive Mandarin language training and area studies. Once that training is complete, they are expected to work for up to a year in Taiwan's parliamentary offices, ministries, other government agencies or offices, or in organisations outside the public sector, AIT said in a statement. The institute did not say how many people would take part each year.
The memorandum of understanding establishing the programme was signed on Tuesday in Arlington, Virginia, by AIT Washington Managing Director Ingrid Larson and Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, the representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States. The programme is coordinated with the U.S. State Department's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. "TFP reflects strong bipartisan support for the US-Taiwan relationship and a shared commitment to the people-to-people ties at its core," Larson said in the statement.
AIT said the main objectives are to expand and strengthen the U.S.-Taiwan partnership and deepen U.S. officials' expertise on Taiwan, and to build a group of federal professionals with language skills, cultural knowledge and "lasting working relationships across Taiwan".
The programme is authorised by the Taiwan Fellowship Act, passed by Congress in December 2022 as part of the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act. It is modelled on the Mike Mansfield Fellowship, the scheme Congress established in 1994 to place U.S. officials inside Japan's government. Implementation of the Taiwan programme had been delayed for years; in May 2024, Senators Edward Markey and Marco Rubio led a bipartisan group urging the State Department to finalise the agreement so the first fellows could arrive by the end of that year.
The United States, like most countries, has no formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan, which China claims as its own, but it is the island's most important international backer and arms supplier. AIT's large office in Taipei functions like an embassy. China says Taiwan is its most important and sensitive diplomatic issue and has repeatedly demanded that Washington curtail its contacts with Taipei and end arms sales. Beijing is likely to view the new arrangement as another challenge to its claim over Taiwan, adding a further layer of tension to already sensitive U.S.-China relations.
The announcement comes days before President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping are due to meet next week for the third time this year, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Shenzhen.