On Aug. 15, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) launched its version of the annual bid to join the UN. But instead of knocking on the front door and asking for membership — as was done last year by former president Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) Democratic Progressive Party government — Ma was meekly asking for “meaningful participation” in UN agencies.
By using this approach, Ma and his administration are undermining Taiwan’s position on a number of fronts.
First, it opens the door for China to claim Taiwan as its subsidiary; second, it endangers Taiwan’s sovereignty because it does not take its status as a free and democratic nation as a starting point; and third, it gives the US and other Western countries an excuse to maintain their “do nothing” approach and allow China to have its way in international organizations.
On the first point: Ma’s approach is to downplay the UN bid and then rely on Beijing’s “goodwill and flexibility” to allow some sort of participation at the WHO’s deliberative body, the World Health Assembly.
But what is the chance that Beijing will move on that issue? China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Chairman Wang Yi (王毅) has already said that China will never agree to WHO membership for Taiwan.
So the only thing left will be a pretzel-like construction whereby information on SARS, avian flu and other health threats would be channeled to Taiwan via Beijing.
This kind of participation is meaningless.
On the second point: Ma’s fuzzy approach seeks to sweep the issue of Taiwan’s status under the rug. While this may be expedient in the short term, it amounts to a strategy of hiding one’s head in the sand. Taiwan’s case to the international community would be aided immensely if Taipei would clearly lay out its bid for membership as an equal, free and democratic member.
Ma’s approach does the opposite and undermines Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Clear arguments in Taiwan’s favor do exist.
In a recent book by Peter Chow titled The One China Dilemma, Taiwanese professors Huang-chih Chiang (姜皇池) and Jau-yuan Hwang (黃昭元) of National Taiwan University provide an excellent legal appraisal of the statehood of Taiwan and show that under international law, Taiwan meets all criteria for statehood. They conclude that the lack of recognition by major Western powers is thus based more on political than legal considerations.
On the third point: While Chen’s front-door approach to UN membership may have made Western governments uneasy, it did appeal to their conscience in the same way appeals from Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938, before being invaded by Germany, made the West feel uneasy.
The subsequent developments in 1938 and 1939 showed how wrong it was for the US and Western Europe to look the other way and ignore the pleas of Czechs and Poles.
Ma’s approach has echoes of a modern-day Neville Chamberlain: He pretends to be working for “peace in our time,” but his actions and policies are strengthening a repressive giant’s claims on a democratic neighbor.
Ma likes to describe his policies as “flexible and pragmatic,” but he is giving pragmatism a bad name. His policies are an example of expediency rather than principle.
Chances are his UN “bid” will go nowhere and in the process risk undermining Taiwan’s position in the international community.
Gerrit van der Wees is editor of Taiwan Communique, a publication based in Washington.
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