On June 29, the Chinese Ministry of Finance released the text of the Articles of Agreement of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
According to Article 3-3 of the agreement: “In the case of an applicant which is not sovereign or not responsible for the conduct of its international relations, application for membership in the Bank shall be presented or agreed by the member of the Bank responsible for its international relations.”
This is unacceptable for Taiwanese.
Under international law, the government of a so-called “sub-state territory” cannot be held responsible for its defense, diplomacy or even financial affairs, as it can merely implement autonomy internally. For this reason, it should have an “administrative power” that acts like a guardian.
If the government of the sub-state territory wants to join an international organization, it may be admitted upon recommendation or application of an administrative power. Article 2-2 of the UNESCO Constitution, Article 8 of the WHO Constitution and Article 2-3 of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) Charter all have similar regulations. Based on this, the AIIB agreement’s rule is nothing new.
According to Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council (MAC), the AIIB agreement opens a “side door” in Article 3-2: “Members of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development or the Asian Development Bank which do not become members in accordance with Article 58 may be admitted, under such terms and conditions as the Bank shall determine, to membership in the Bank by a Special Majority vote of the Board of Governors as provided in Article 28.”
This leads to the assessment that Taiwan could join the AIIB as an ADB member.
However, on the ADB’s official member list, Taiwan is represented as “Taipei,China” with the space after the comma intentionally omitted. Although the Chinese title is translated as “China Taipei” (中國台北), the bank currently only recognizes the English title, which remains unchanged as “Taipei,China.” Taiwan protests to the bank over the title every year. However, in the AIIB, Chinese, English and French are the official languages.
In addition, China is set to hold a 30.34 percent stake in the bank and 26.06 percent of the voting rights and therefore will enjoy the ability to veto decisions, which means that Taiwan’s AIIB bid depends on Beijing.
The release of the AIIB agreement shows that Beijing has set a trap by taking advantage of the impulsive application by President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) administration at a time when the overall situation was still rather unclear. Taiwan Thinktank vice chief executive officer Lai I-chung (賴怡忠) said the Ma administration’s real mistake was delivering a letter of intent to China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) instead of its Ministry of Finance. Delivering the letter to the TAO implies a domestic relationship, while an application to the ministry would have implied an international relationship.
If the Ma administration accepts Article 3-3 of the AIIB agreement, it would be tacitly accepting China’s status as the administrative power over Taiwan. This would completely violate the status of Taiwan and the outlying islands of Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu as designated in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. The US was the main signatory of the treaty on behalf of the UN, so if Taiwan has an administrating power, it has to be the US. By faxing Taiwan’s letter of intent, Ma actually stabbed the US in the back while jumping ship. As Taiwan’s administrative power, how could the US not prevent the consequence of Ma’s impulsive actions?HoonTing is a political commentator.
Translated by Eddy Chang
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