An outbreak of measles in Japan has resulted in more than 3,500 people in the southern Taiwanese harbor of Kaohsiung being quarantined. They are being monitored by Taiwan’s health authorities. Two dozen people have been confirmed to have the highly contagious disease. Measles causes a high fever and rash and can be fatal to infants.
Also, in February last year, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed Taiwan’s first human fatality from the H7N9 avian flu virus. Earlier, a poultry farm and a turkey farm in southern Taiwan tested positive for a highly pathogenic avian flu virus.
Fifteen years ago, a close cooperative relationship between Taiwan and the US helped the CDC stem the spread of SARS in Taiwan, unlike China, which for months failed to report an outbreak of the extremely contagious disease, resulting in more than 7,000 cases and 648 deaths.
Taiwan acted quickly and provided valuable treatment information to the international health community.
The world is indeed fortunate that Taiwan has such excellent human and animal health talent, data collection, quarantine and treatment facilities.
It is critical that the international community has full access to Taiwan’s high-quality health information through the WHO, which would enable global health services to effectively battle diseases.
Diseases do not stop at borders and health knows no boundaries, so it is critical to the US and to the rest of the world that Taiwan join the WHO as a full member.
It is an outrage that China prevents Taiwan from joining the WHO as a full member, let alone that China prevents Taiwan from participating in the World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting in Geneva.
What if someone carrying measles or SARS gets on a plane in Taipei and disembarks in my hometown of Houston, Texas, or in New York, Atlanta, Washington or Shanghai? It would spell human disaster.
What it boils down to is that China effectively plays politics with the lives of the people of Taiwan and with the lives of the people in the rest of the world.
It is likely that China will again block Taiwan’s bid to join the WHA in Geneva from May 21 to May 26.
We at the Formosan Association for Public Affairs have suggested to the US Department of State that it should tell China that if it does not let Taiwan join the WHA summit in Geneva next month, US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar will visit Taiwan to study Taiwan’s excellent healthcare system.
Let the Chinese pick one.
There is unanimous support for Taiwan’s WHO campaign in the US House of Representatives and the US Senate. A “WHO for Taiwan” law has passed the House and has been introduced in the Senate. Yet there is only so much that the US can do. After all, it is not up to the US to let Taiwan join the WHO.
Ironically, it seems it is not up to the WHO either. More than a decade ago, we asked then-WHO director-general Gro Harlem Brundtland why she did not let Taiwan join the WHO. She told us we were knocking at the wrong door; that Taiwan would need to work it out with China.
Taiwan needs to continue to apply for participation in the WHA year after year, for it needs to continue to educate the world that it is unconscionable that its 23 million people are left out of this important international organization.
Being a WHO member is not a luxury, it is a necessity. It is a necessity for Taiwan and for the rest of the world.
Taiwan should do right by building a “Coalition of the Willing” to get Taiwan into the WHO — a coalition of friends and allies, such as the US, Japan, Canada and Australia — and get it to stand up against China.
Taiwan should not just apply this strategy to its WHO campaign, but also to its campaigns to join the International Civil Aviation Organization and Interpol.
After being shunned by these organizations for decades, it is time the 23 million people of Taiwan join them. They deserve it.
Mike Kuo is president of the Formosan Association for Public Affairs.
Late last month, Beijing introduced changes to school curricula in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, requiring certain subjects to be taught in Mandarin rather than Mongolian. What is Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) seeking to gain from sending this message of pernicious intent? It is possible that he is attempting cultural genocide in Inner Mongolia, but does Xi also have the same plan for the democratic, independent nation of Mongolia? The controversy emerged with the announcement by the Inner Mongolia Education Bureau on Aug. 26 that first-grade elementary-school and junior-high students would in certain subjects start learning with Chinese-language textbooks, as
For the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), China’s “century of humiliation” is the gift that keeps on giving. Beijing returns again and again to the theme of Western imperialism, oppression and exploitation to keep stoking the embers of grievance and resentment against the West, and especially the US. However, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) that in 1949 announced it had “stood up” soon made clear what that would mean for Chinese and the world — and it was not an agenda that would engender pride among ordinary Chinese, or peace of mind in the international community. At home, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) launched
There are worrying signs that China is on the brink of a major food shortage, which might trigger a strategic contest over food security and push Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), already under intense pressure, toward drastic measures, potentially spelling trouble for Taiwan and the rest of the world. China has encountered a perfect storm of disasters this year. On top of disruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, torrential rains have caused catastrophic flooding in the Yangtze River basin, China’s largest agricultural region. Floodwaters are estimated to have already destroyed the crops on 6 million hectares of farmland. The situation has been
The restructuring of supply chains, particularly in the semiconductor industry, was an essential part of discussions last week between Taiwan and a US delegation led by US Undersecretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment Keith Krach. It took precedent over the highly anticipated subject of bilateral trade partnerships, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) founder Morris Chang’s (張忠謀) appearance on Friday at a dinner hosted by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) for Krach was a subtle indicator of this. Chang was in photographs posted by Tsai on Facebook after the dinner, but no details about their discussions were disclosed. With
RSS