A Flash in the Pan or A Dream Yet to be Materialised? On Taiwan’s 2030 Bilingual Nation Policy

The National Development Council of Taiwan released the Blueprint for Developing Taiwan into a Bilingual Nation by 2030 Policy in 2018. This ambitious policy aimed to transform Taiwan into a bilingual nation within twelve years. With the strong support of two successive presidents, Ms Tsai Ing-wen and Mr Lai Ching-Te, various projects were implemented nationwide to ensure bilingual education was available at as many schools as possible. Yet, voices questioning the legitimacy of the policy have never been stopped, given the fact that 87% of citizens support the idea that English should be adopted as the second official language of Taiwan, and 89% of citizens support the idea that bilingual classes should be more widely set up in public elementary and junior high schools. As most schools strived to implement the debatable bilingual education policy, the government unexpectedly made a U-turn about the policy in 2024. It announced that international education will gradually replace bilingual education and become the new direction for future development. In this paper, the researcher will examine various subjective and objective factors that hindered or promoted the implementation of bilingual education in Taiwan over the past eight years.