The disappearance of eight Taiwanese businessmen in the waters off Madagascar earlier this month and their families’ attempts to contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to help them locate the missing men highlighted the lack of an effective mechanism to offer diplomatic assistance to Taiwanese overseas.
During such emergencies, every second counts and the mechanism should have kicked into action immediately. The problem is action is not the strong suit of diplomats. Although diplomacy is an extension of domestic politics, the organizational structure of Taiwanese overseas missions has flaws, making it difficult for them to offer full assistance.
Following are some suggestions on how the ministry can quickly gain assistance-related information, set up a diplomatic assistance network and interpret vital information.
First, a call transfer system should be set up. This is easy to set up in overseas missions given continuing changes and improvements in telecommunications technologies. The cost of transferring calls using VoIP telephony, for instance, to the ministry or transferring calls from different departments of the ministry to the person on duty is not high. A call transfer system would allow foreign missions to operate 24/7 and thus bring the function of diplomatic assistance into full play.
A call transfer system is like the command center at fire and police stations, which allow emergency information or calls to be monitored at any time and dealt with instantly. Of course, the ministry can cooperate with these organizations only on the premise that there are officials taking emergency calls. The establishment of a call transfer service, in fact, means the establishment of a virtual diplomatic assistance command center.
Second, a virtual diplomatic assistance command center should be established. “Virtual” does not mean “non-existent,” but rather setting up a regional rescue network without spending money on a physical command center or expensive equipment. Taiwanese missions abroad can form a hierarchical and systematic network enabling emergency assistance and mobilization. It can also be done by establishing a virtual regional emergency assistance network in different time zones such as Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas.
As it is more difficult to quickly mobilize agencies to provide assistance overseas than at home, a virtual diplomatic assistance command center can integrate domestic and overseas assistance resources and provide diplomatic assistance. Rescue operations might not function well in some developing countries that have less developed government mechanisms for assistance because of political, economic and administrative problems. Diplomatic staffers should not use this as an excuse, but instead be even more aggressive in combining domestic and international rescue resources, thus forging official and non-official diplomatic assistance relations.
Because the nation’s diplomatic and consular staffing system is not flexible and the function of the nation’s overseas organizations is not complete, the government can take advantage of the local branches of global assistance organizations or set up and cooperate with global nonprofit, non-governmental organizations through its overseas missions to be able to respond quickly to emergencies.
In short, the government should establish a virtual diplomatic assistance command center to connect all existing networks and make use of domestic and international resources to offset the defects of the current emergency assistance mechanism.
Yang Yung-nane is a political science professor and vice dean of the College of Social Sciences at Cheng Kung University.
Translated by Ted Yang
The FBI on Sunday arrested Wanying “Heather” Chang (張婉瑩) on suspicion of surveiling the family of the son of President William Lai (賴清德) on behalf of China, an example of “transnational repression” to suppress dissent in Taiwan and abroad. Zhang, a 34-year old realtor in California, was arrested on charges of working as an unregistered agent for China. She and an accomplice were accused of taking photos and videos of Lai’s son and his family, and sending information about their whereabouts and license plates to Chinese officials. “The information could be used by China to gain leverage over the Taiwanese president
On Oct. 10, 1911, gunfire in Wuchang (武昌) shattered the stillness of late-Qing China. What began as a regional uprising quickly ignited a chain reaction across the empire, toppling a dynastic order that had endured for more than two millennia and ushering in one of Asia’s first republics — the Republic of China (ROC). From that moment, the 10th day of the 10th month became a date of epochal significance, not merely in Chinese history, but in the broader arc of Asia’s encounter with modernity. Yet today, as Taiwan marks Double Ten National Day, the holiday’s meaning has undergone a transformation
Taiwan might just give up. That’s the argument Simon Shuster made in The Atlantic’s October issue. The US is unreliable, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) leadership is aligned with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Taiwan does not have the military capability to defend itself in a prolonged war without help. What hope does Taiwan have? Quite a bit more, in fact, than Shuster lets on. Shuster points to genuine problems. The first Donald Trump administration had a mostly positive record on Taiwan policy. It regularized the arms sales process, enhanced the military-to-military relationship, and treated Taiwan more like a normal
A few days ago, we left our breakfast midway to catch a glimpse of the fighter jets in formation. It was a spectacular sight. We knew it was part of practice drills for Double Ten National Day celebrations and reminded us of the Annual Republic day celebration in India. While channel surfing, I came across a news debate about immigration laws, where an academic asked a fellow panelist: “Why should we be interested in your point of view when you don’t even belong here?” That got me thinking. Was our enthusiasm about the upcoming Double Ten celebrations unwarranted? Was this
RSS