China seems to have relented in its ongoing diplomatic campaign to pressure Taiwan in the international arena, as fewer examples of such behavior were reported to the foreign ministry, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday.
“In the first half of the year, there were relatively fewer examples of China’s suppression of Taiwan,” MOFA spokesman Henry Chen (陳銘政) said after the ministry updated its Web page listing China’s latest attempts to denigrate Taiwan in the international arena.
The ministry updates the site every three months to inform the public of incidents in which Beijing undermines Taiwan’s participation in international political, economic, trade, athletic or cultural events.
It remains unclear, however, if the trend is related to President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) election on March 22 and the “modus vivendi” diplomatic strategy he put in place after being inaugurated on May 20.
Ma has described his “modus vivendi” approach as a pragmatic diplomatic strategy to gain more international space for Taiwan. It aims to safeguard Taiwan’s rights while consolidating diplomatic relations with allies and restoring mutual trust with countries that influence Taiwan even in the absence of formal diplomatic ties.
Ma also proposed a “diplomatic truce” aimed at ending the longstanding diplomatic tug-of-war with China in which both countries try to lure each other’s allies to switch diplomatic allegiance by offering them large sums of money in foreign aid.
The MOFA Web site said that among the incidents in which China exerted pressure on Taiwan was when Beijing reasserted its claim of sovereignty over Taiwan and the Diaoyutai (釣魚台) islands after a Taiwanese recreational boat collided with a Japanese patrol vessel and sank near the islands on June 10.
After the incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang (秦剛) referred to the Taiwanese vessel as a “Taiwan, China” fishing boat and reiterated that the Diaoyutais are Chinese territory. Qin also demanded that the Japanese Coast Guard end any illegal encroachment into Chinese territorial waters.
In another attempt to suppress Taiwan’s international presence, China on May 20 blocked Taiwan’s bid to participate as an observer at the World Health Assembly — WHO’s top decision-making body.
China had also successfully prevented officials of Taiwan’s representative office in Germany from attending a seminar held by Germany’s health department by protesting and threatening to withdraw from the event.
The German city of Hamburg on Oct. 14 named a bridge “Kaohsiung-Brucke” after the Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung. The footbridge, formerly known as F566, is to the east of the Speicherstadt, the world’s largest warehouse district, and connects the Dar-es-Salaam-Platz to the Brooktorpromenade near the Port of Hamburg on the Elbe River. Timo Fischer, a Free Democratic Party member of the Hamburg-Mitte District Assembly, in May last year proposed the name change with support from members of the Social Democratic Party and the Christian Democratic Union. Kaohsiung and Hamburg in 1999 inked a sister city agreement, but despite more than a quarter-century of
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