Qatar strategy needed
On Monday last week, Saudi Arabia spearheaded a diplomatic assault against Qatar, cutting diplomatic ties and transport links with the state.
Although Taiwan has no representative office in Qatar, it maintains close bilateral ties with the country. For instance, an alliance of Taiwanese petrochemical companies has invested in Qatar’s largest methanol production plant and in recent years has also teamed up with Qatar to invest in plants in other Gulf states.
There are approximately 100 Taiwanese expatriates living in Qatar and a considerably higher number living in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh.
Taiwanese expatriates working in education, commerce, engineering and the airline industry are held in high regard throughout Qatari society for their professionalism. In recent years a number of Qatari students, through the recommendation of Taiwanese teachers working at Qatari universities, have chosen Taiwan as a location for exchange study.
As Taiwan does not operate a representative office in Qatar, both Taiwanese expatriates needing to renew their passports and Qatari businessmen traveling to Taiwan have to courier documentation to Taiwan’s representative office in Saudi Arabia. This is likely to become more difficult now, while it will undoubtedly also reduce the flow of information on business opportunities for Taiwanese companies hoping to compete for large-scale infrastructure projects as Qatar prepares to stage the 2022 FIFA World Cup.
Furthermore, judging by information posted on Taiwanese travel agency Web sites, the rupturing of relations with Saudi Arabia also leaves many unanswered questions as to how Taiwanese nationals will be able to apply for visas to visit Qatar.
With many neighboring Arab countries now imposing an air blockade on Qatar, the visa application process is likely to take even longer than normal.
The government would do well to learn from Singapore. In Qatar, hotels that are rated four-star and above are permitted by the Qatari government to process visas. Compared with foreign embassies, the process is much faster and more efficient. The Singaporean government encourages Singaporean businessmen to purchase or build four-star or better hotels in Qatar and then employ young Singaporeans to work as management staff at the hotels.
In the past few years, I have traveled to Qatar on many occasions and have have come across many Singaporean managers working at hotels in Qatar who have participated in the annual Han Kuang military exercises between Singapore and Taiwan.
Through their exposure to a multitude of cultures, all the Singaporean management staff who I have met possessed a mature international outlook, as well as excellent service skills.
The government is pushing its “new southbound policy” and aims to expand business ties with the Muslim-majority countries. If, at a time when Qatar is facing a serious shock to its economy, Taiwan were to invest in the country’s tourism hotel market, not only would this further increase the feeling of goodwill in Qatar toward Taiwan in the short-term, in the medium-term it would bring in business opportunities arising from the FIFA World Cup and in the long-term it would help Taiwan to circumvent China’s “One Belt, One Road” initiative, so that Qatar functions as Taiwan’s gateway to the Persian Gulf, Iran and even the Middle East.
The multiple strategic benefits that Qatar affords certainly warrants close consideration by the government.
Kang Si-wei
Taipei
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers