The crackdown on students in the 1989 Tiananmen Incident made many students who had intended to go to the mainland think again, while several hundred foreign students already in the mainland left for Taiwan in search of a safer learning environment.
一九八九年大陸爆發鎮壓學生的「天安門事件」，就讓許多想到大陸學中文的外國學生卻步，還有數百名在大陸的外籍學生為了更安全的學習環境，而湧入台灣。