Taiwan’s future independence relies in part on the nation’s ability to activate the vast potential of civil society, as the government cannot not speak and act freely.
China is increasingly pressuring multinational companies and strong European countries to list Taiwan as a province of China. This includes hotels, airlines and countries like Sweden. Moreover, Beijing is influencing or creating various cultural events in Europe to emphasize its perspective.
For this and other purposes, China has segmented European nations into different categories. This allows Beijing to target each segment for different strategic goals.
Anti-Chinese sentiment is slowly on the rise, but Europe is divided on foreign policies and the EU itself is primarily focused on trade, and China in an important market. Consequently, Taiwan risks losing this battle of influence and public opinion.
Taiwanese face these challenges on the road to independence, despite the nation’s soft power in various areas such as high-tech, culture and democracy.
However, Taiwan can walk faster down the avenue of independence and might turn the battle around regarding influence and public perception if civil society is engaged more creatively.
In politics and international affairs, Taiwan needs more public voices in the media and at various types of meetings that can voice the arguments that government officials cannot say publicly.
Moreover, Taiwanese officials tend to be more reactive than proactive to negative media coverage, and their proactive attempts tend to be written in a diplomatic language, which is of no interest to journalists.
In the efforts to promote Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assemble, government officials can and do ask politicians for support, but it is rarely given substantial coverage in the media or elsewhere. This requires detailed knowledge and the ability to make a strong argument, which government officials and European politicians are not capable of doing.
A complex network of contacts can make Taiwan more visible. Academia, journalists and civil society must meet so that more opportunities can be created. Civil society needs freedom or a lack of control to do this. However, freedom will sometimes result in negative coverage.
Taiwan is already engaging with civil society and has done a great job in several countries. Taiwan should focus on making the engagement less official and more free. The latter might result in more unpredictable outcomes, but they can supplement current activities.
Independent civil groups should be contacted as the public finds them more acceptable.
It is equally important that the groups be financially independent. Civil society groups exist in Europe and have different agendas. Most of the groups are private coffee clubs that promote social networking or non-active discussion of Taiwanese politics.
However, there are groups that are willing to go public and work for Taiwan and get other people out of their coffee clubs.
Taiwan’s road to independence requires creativity and civil society can contribute to this end with or without the government’s support.
However, without encouragement, Taiwan risks losing the battle.
Michael Danielsen is chairman of Taiwan Corner, a Danish non-governmental organization.
Taiwan stands at the epicenter of a seismic shift that will determine the Indo-Pacific’s future security architecture. Whether deterrence prevails or collapses will reverberate far beyond the Taiwan Strait, fundamentally reshaping global power dynamics. The stakes could not be higher. Today, Taipei confronts an unprecedented convergence of threats from an increasingly muscular China that has intensified its multidimensional pressure campaign. Beijing’s strategy is comprehensive: military intimidation, diplomatic isolation, economic coercion, and sophisticated influence operations designed to fracture Taiwan’s democratic society from within. This challenge is magnified by Taiwan’s internal political divisions, which extend to fundamental questions about the island’s identity and future
The narrative surrounding Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attendance at last week’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit — where he held hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin and chatted amiably with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) — was widely framed as a signal of Modi distancing himself from the US and edging closer to regional autocrats. It was depicted as Modi reacting to the levying of high US tariffs, burying the hatchet over border disputes with China, and heralding less engagement with the Quadrilateral Security dialogue (Quad) composed of the US, India, Japan and Australia. With Modi in China for the
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) has postponed its chairperson candidate registration for two weeks, and so far, nine people have announced their intention to run for chairperson, the most on record, with more expected to announce their campaign in the final days. On the evening of Aug. 23, shortly after seven KMT lawmakers survived recall votes, KMT Chairman Eric Chu (朱立倫) announced he would step down and urged Taichung Mayor Lu Shiow-yen (盧秀燕) to step in and lead the party back to power. Lu immediately ruled herself out the following day, leaving the subject in question. In the days that followed, several
The Jamestown Foundation last week published an article exposing Beijing’s oil rigs and other potential dual-use platforms in waters near Pratas Island (Dongsha Island, 東沙島). China’s activities there resembled what they did in the East China Sea, inside the exclusive economic zones of Japan and South Korea, as well as with other South China Sea claimants. However, the most surprising element of the report was that the authors’ government contacts and Jamestown’s own evinced little awareness of China’s activities. That Beijing’s testing of Taiwanese (and its allies) situational awareness seemingly went unnoticed strongly suggests the need for more intelligence. Taiwan’s naval
RSS