A group of Malaysian education officials was in Taipei on Monday on an exchange program organized by the Ministry of Education (MOE) aimed at promoting greater cooperation on Chinese language instruction and expose them to language classes.

The ministry is hoping to use the program to continue expanding cooperation with Malaysia in the field of Chinese language teaching, certification, and teaching material development, it said.

Another key goal is to attract more Malaysian students to study in Taiwan and encourage Malaysians to recruit Taiwanese to teach Chinese in schools in the southeast Asian country.

Speaking at the opening of the 2019 Malaysia Mandarin Training Program at National Taipei University of Education, MOE official Huang Wei-yu (黃薳玉) called Taiwan an ideal place for learning traditional Chinese characters because people get to connect with traditional Chinese culture in a free and democratic society.

Taiwan currently has 60 Mandarin learning centers, and several of them also provide language proficiency tests for foreign nationals, said Huang, who is with the MOE's Department of International and Cross-strait Education.

Huang expected that Taiwan's curriculum, faculty and teaching materials would be able to meet all of the Chinese-language education needs of Malaysia.

The 13 officials, invited by the MOE, are currently in Taiwan on a week-long visit, where they also plan to visit the Wenshan School of Special Education, Jinwen University of Science & Technology, Yangmingshan National Park, and National Palace Museum.

According to an MOE statement, there were 16,717 Malaysian students studying in universities or colleges in Taiwan in 2018.