Solomon’s Take on “Taiwan Tech Trek” (By Solomon Chang)

This summer, I participated in a government-sponsored internship program in Taiwan called “Taiwan Tech Trek.” The aim of the Taiwan Tech Trek (TTT) is to raise Taiwan’s overall competitiveness in various fields by attracting oversea and domestic Taiwanese youths with internship opportunities. Ultimately, through this eight week internship experience, interns would be interested enough to pursue a career in Taiwan in the future. Since this internship program only started three years ago, there are always the good and bad. Hopefully, I will be able to illuminate some of those points in the following discussion of my internship experience.

When I first got my acceptance letter to this internship program, I was not that ecstatic. In the first place, I really didn’t need to do this internship because I already did one a year ago in Washington DC with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. In addition, I was also expected to begin my master’s program in Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington this summer after getting my bachelor’s degree from College of William and Mary this May. As my rifle drill teammates would say, I was “squared away” for the next two years.

There were, however, three reasons I decided to accept the internship offer. First, I didn’t want to idle during my summer break and this internship might just help me gain valuable experience as an international relations professional in the future. Second, I had not returned to Taiwan for six years and it would be a good chance to visit relatives there. Third, it was a paid internship, which was hard for me to refuse. That is how I became one of the 300 participants to the 2007 Taiwan Tech Trek.

Originally upon my acceptance into this internship program, I was assigned as a research assistant at Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD) with four other students. However, all five of us were later “sub-contracted” to other NGOs that had partnership with TFD. While seemingly redundant, our internship supervisor Patrick Wu was keen to realize that while all five of us had political science background, TFD was not that big of an organization in having the resources to individually cater to our academic interests. Instead, pairing all five of us interns an NGO that specializes in a particular field was a better utilization of TFD’s resources and time. Due to my interest with cross-Strait issues, Patrick Wu was kind enough to pair me up with Taiwan Thinktank and for that, he will always have my gratitude and respect.

Taiwan Thinktank is an independent nonprofit public policy research institution formed in 2001. While considered a pan-green organization due to its close ties with DPP, it acts as a platform for dialogue among various government agencies and between government departments, academia, and the business community. Suffice to say, I had a blast interning at Taiwan Thinktank! During my six-week tenure at the Taiwan Thinktank, I was primarily responsible with article translation and editing. In addition, I also provided logistical support to two academic conferences (One was the Transitional Justice and the other was After the Third Wave). There, I had a better insight into the inner workings of an NGO and the planning of a conference. In addition, I also had an opportunity to collaborate with the CEO of Taiwan Thinktank, J. J. Kuo, on his conference paper for “After the Third Wave Conference.” Lastly, I had the pleasure of meeting some Taiwanese political figures that I’ve only been able to read about in the newspaper, such as President Chen Shui-bien, Government Information Office Minister Stanley Hsieh, and Premier Chang Chun-hsiung. All in all, I gained a lot more than what I asked in the first place.

Unfortunately, my placement with Taiwan Foundation for Democracy was probably the only thing the TTT (Taiwan Tech Trek) did right. Although I am strongly supportive of the TTT missions, I am also a harsh critic to TTT’s execution and design of the internship program. Due to a limited amount of space I’m given for this essay, I cannot fully explain everything in great detail. I will, however, point out two important flaws to this program, flaws that I think shouldn’t even happen in the first place.

The first is what I call a mismatch of talents between supply and demand. When applying for this program, applicants submit an online application that details their preferences and language skill abilities. Then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs screens these applications and sends them to appropriate sponsoring hosts for final selection. The problem is that during the selection process there is no follow up by the sponsoring hosts to verify what applicants put down for on the paper. In particular, applicants have a huge incentive to inflate their language capabilities to get their desired position. Much of this can be avoided if TTT requires applicants to submit a formal language assessment from their university and implement some sort of interviewing opportunities, so that sponsoring hosts can further verify if the applicant is a “match” for their organization. Often times, a real-time interaction can shed new light on the applicants contrary to what the application indicates. Furthermore, the TTT may want to reconsider the core value to an internship. Although this may not apply for everyone, I do know that from my personal observations, some participants were merely hired to engage in mundane activities such as data-entry. For an internship program that provides $50,000 NT in stipend to everyone, the under-utilization of the applicants’ unique academic and language abilities is a huge waste of resource and time for TTT. Why even hire us in the first place if the job can be done by local students? Over the past three years, TTT has expanded considerably in quantitative terms, but now is the time to expand qualitatively, or the program risk being nothing more than a political propaganda tool for the Taiwanese government.

The second problem concerns the lack of management in alumni networking. By my rough estimate, there are at least 500 TTT alumni around the world. Yet, the TTT does not seem to have a plan in organizing or utilizing us to further its goals. That includes recruitment of the program or informing us ways we alumni can pursue a career in Taiwan if we choose to do so in the future. Worse, it seems that our very existence is all but forgotten. When I asked my high school classmate Eva Chen on how she was contacted in the first place to be a guest speaker during orientation program (at that time she was teaching AP Psychology at her high school alma mater in Hsin Chu City), her response was, “You know, I don’t think they even know I was working in Taiwan for one year.” Again, this shows how TTT is missing out on another potentially important opportunity in the innovation of its internship program.

At the end of the day though, despite all its flaws, I’d still say that the program is worth the experience. However, time is running out on TTT for a second renaissance. Whether they like to admit or not, TTT now stands at a crossroad that either points toward the path of greatness or the path of oblivion. Your move, TTT!