In the meeting between Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Lien Chan (
As members of the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance, a non-governmental organization (NGO) spearheading the advocacy of Taiwan's WHO entry bid, we firmly oppose Taiwan's WHO participation being based unrealistically on China's "consent and help." The reasons are three-fold:
First, if we were willing to make concessions to join the WHO with China's "consent," we could have long since become a member. According to chapter three of the WHO's constitution, there can be three types of WHO participants: member, associate member and observer.
Full membership is open to members of the UN. Associate membership is open to colonial or self-governing territories. As for observership, there is no standard criteria -- observers can be a sovereign nation, a quasi-sovereign nation or an NGO.
From Beijing's perspective, Taiwan is a province of China; therefore, Taiwan can be admitted to the WHO only if China files an associate membership application on Taiwan's behalf, or if individual Taiwanese medical professionals join China's WHO delegation. But this would relegate Taiwan to the position of being a colony of China.
Even the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region under China's "one country, two systems" policy is no more than an associate member, so if Taiwan accepts China's conditions, its status will be degraded to that of Hong Kong.
Taiwan, after all, has a full-fledged governmental health department, which has the ability to exercise public power. It is not an NGO. And even if Taiwan were to enter the WHO as an NGO, its troubles would be far from over, as China may continue to raise obstacles and undermine Taiwan's status as a sovereign nation in cases where public power is used to intervene in international health issues.
Second, health statistics for each side of the Taiwan Strait are quite different. Taiwan and China have been separated for more than a century, and there are tremendous cross-strait divergences.
China's overall health system performance ranks 144th among 191 WHO member states. Therefore, joining the Chinese delegation to the WHO would not satisfy Taiwanese people's healthcare needs. Not to mention that in tackling an outbreak, there would surely be no time for Taiwan to wait for Beijing to release WHO information -- which has to pass through several layers of bureaucracy.
Third, yielding to China's conditions to facilitate Taiwan's WHO bid would be no different than endorsing China's lies at the WHO over the past years. Since Taiwan's initial advocacy in promoting its WHO participation, China has stood by the falsehood that it is helping Taiwan in many medical fields. We want to ask, when did China earmark any of its healthcare funds for Taiwan? Which of Taiwan's health research projects was funded by China?
In sum, Taiwan's WHO entry bid must not become a tool of cross-strait political rivalry. Rather, it should be the basic right of the 23 million Taiwanese people. If Taiwan joins the WHO on the premise of China's consent, Taiwan's healthcare contributions and achievements will all be taken by China as its own.
Wu Shuh-min is president of the Foundation of Medical Professionals Alliance.
TRANSLATED BY LIN YA-TI
US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) were born under the sign of Gemini. Geminis are known for their intelligence, creativity, adaptability and flexibility. It is unlikely, then, that the trade conflict between the US and China would escalate into a catastrophic collision. It is more probable that both sides would seek a way to de-escalate, paving the way for a Trump-Xi summit that allows the global economy some breathing room. Practically speaking, China and the US have vulnerabilities, and a prolonged trade war would be damaging for both. In the US, the electoral system means that public opinion
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
RSS