Taiwan's New Southbound Policy: What It Offers ASEAN Students and Universities

What the New Southbound Policy is

Taiwan launched the New Southbound Policy (NSP) in 2016 to deepen trade, tourism, and people-to-people ties with 18 target countries across ASEAN and South Asia, plus Australia and New Zealand. Education sits at the center of the people-to-people strand of the policy, since Taiwan's government treats students who study there as a long-term channel for economic and diplomatic ties, not just a source of tuition revenue.

Students from NSP countries were already a large share of Taiwan's international student body when the policy launched. As of 2016, over 31,500 students from NSP countries studied in Taiwan, and more than 90% of them came from ASEAN, according to analysis published by Brookings . Malaysia alone accounted for over half of that NSP-country student population, with Indonesia at roughly 15.4% and Vietnam at roughly 14.2%.

The funding behind the policy

Taiwan backed the policy with a growing budget.

The NSP-linked government budget rose from about USD 131 million in 2017 to about USD 241 million in 2018, a 63% increase, with the Education Ministry's own allocation reaching about USD 56.5 million in 2018, per the same Brookings analysis.

That funding covers scholarships, university partnership grants, and support for Mandarin and vocational training programs aimed at NSP-country students, alongside non-education spending on trade and infrastructure cooperation.

Scholarship growth on the ground

The clearest evidence of the policy's effect on individual students shows up in scholarship numbers. Malaysia offers a documented example: the number of Malaysian students receiving the MOE Taiwan Scholarship grew from 20 in 2017 to 37 in 2024, according to Taiwan's Ministry of Education . Other ASEAN countries saw comparable expansion in their own scholarship quotas over the same period, part of a deliberate government push to widen access beyond the small number of students who could previously afford Taiwan without funding.

Where enrollment stands now

International student numbers in Taiwan reached 123,190 in 2024, a five-year high and growth of more than 7% year over year, though still short of the pre-pandemic benchmark of roughly 130,000 students in 2019, according to ICEF Monitor . Among students who went on to hold post-graduation employment permits, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam were the top three nationalities, together accounting for 76% of that group, a sign that NSP countries now form the backbone of Taiwan's foreign graduate workforce pipeline rather than a side channel.

Taiwan's stated target is 320,000 international students by 2030, with roughly 210,000 of them expected to remain in Taiwan to work after graduating.

Reaching that target depends heavily on continued ASEAN enrollment growth, since the pool of mainland Chinese students that once made up a large share of Taiwan's international body has shrunk for political reasons unrelated to the NSP itself.

University partnerships and what changed on campus

Beyond scholarships, the NSP pushed Taiwanese universities to build direct partnerships with ASEAN institutions: credit-transfer agreements, joint and dual-degree tracks, and industry-academia collaboration programs that pair classroom study with paid internships at Taiwanese companies. These partnerships expanded the number of ASEAN students who could study in Taiwan without a full scholarship, since a partner-university pathway or a paid work-study placement lowers the cost barrier compared to studying fully self-funded.

The industry-academia stream in particular grew quickly under NSP funding, but it has also drawn scrutiny.

Some universities placed overseas students, including Vietnamese students, in exploitative work arrangements rather than genuine study-work programs, which led Taiwan's Ministry of Education to ban several institutions from recruiting overseas students and to tighten oversight rules across the board.

That history does not erase what the NSP has done for scholarship access and university partnerships overall, but it means ASEAN students should evaluate individual programs and universities on their own record, not assume every NSP-linked opportunity carries the same level of oversight.

What this means if you are applying now

For an ASEAN student today, the NSP era has produced more scholarship slots than a decade ago, more partner universities offering direct pathways from a home-country institution, and a clearer post-study work runway backed by Taiwan's own 2030 enrollment target.

Use that to your advantage by applying to NSP-funded scholarship tracks specifically, since competition there is measured against a national quota rather than an open pool, and by checking a university's current standing with the Ministry of Education before committing to any work-study component of your offer.