Last week, something improbable happened: An international organization kicked China out and named a Taiwanese as its next president for 2021 to 2023. Jack Li (李友專) had over the past decade been nominated several times to be president of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), but each time China allegedly rallied its allies to block the move.
Taiwan has also been chosen to host the 2023 MedInfo conference, one of the largest and most prestigious events in the medical informatics field. While the IMIA is by no means a household name like the WHO or the UN, it has been around for 30 years and has 61 member nations and 51 academic institutes.
China’s expulsion was not even a contested issue — 28 members voted in favor of the motion, one voted against and 10 abstained. Apparently, it was booted for “a series of improprieties,” such as changing the venue of an assembly four times when it was host and failure to pay its fees, the Taipei Times reported on Saturday last week.
Curiously, the Taiwan Association for Medical Informatics posted a clarification on its Web site on Saturday asserting that China being kicked out and Li being elected president, as well as Taiwan gaining the right to host the conference, were completely unrelated. It went on to state that China had always supported Taiwan’s endeavors and ambitions within the organization, and had never interfered with Li’s presidential bids.
It is naive to think that China was kicked out to make room for Taiwan, but given China’s behavior toward Taiwan on all levels of international interaction, down to harmless cultural festivals, it seems extremely unlikely that China would support a Taiwanese as president and root for Taiwan to host a major event.
That Li became president immediately upon China’s expulsion is also telling. Furthermore, the Central News Agency cited Li as saying that he never thought he would have this chance amid Chinese pressure.
However, no matter how Taiwan earned this “victory,” it is worth celebrating in light of all the international setbacks it has suffered due to ramped up Chinese pressure over the past several years.
Most of Taiwan’s victories on the international stage have been related to democracy, human rights and free speech — areas in which China blatantly fails. From Reporters Without Borders and the Oslo Freedom Forum to the Federation of International Human Rights Museums earlier this month, international organizations have specifically chosen to set up shop in Taiwan for obvious reasons.
However, the IMIA development is more than just about “winning” against China. Taiwan would not get to be such a prominent member of an organization if it did not have the skills to back it up. The nation has an excellent electronic medical records system with extensive data through its world-class National Health Insurance program. It is also known for leveraging its cutting-edge information technology capabilities to establish a wide array of smart health products and solutions. As part of its soft power diplomacy, Taiwan has been sharing these capabilities with other nations, and such an achievement is even more worthy of celebration than the recognition of the nation’s often overlooked accomplishments.
Wherever one looks, the United States is ceding ground to China. From foreign aid to foreign trade, and from reorganizations to organizational guidance, the Trump administration has embarked on a stunning effort to hobble itself in grappling with what his own secretary of state calls “the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” The problems start at the Department of State. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has asserted that “it’s not normal for the world to simply have a unipolar power” and that the world has returned to multipolarity, with “multi-great powers in different parts of the
President William Lai (賴清德) recently attended an event in Taipei marking the end of World War II in Europe, emphasizing in his speech: “Using force to invade another country is an unjust act and will ultimately fail.” In just a few words, he captured the core values of the postwar international order and reminded us again: History is not just for reflection, but serves as a warning for the present. From a broad historical perspective, his statement carries weight. For centuries, international relations operated under the law of the jungle — where the strong dominated and the weak were constrained. That
The Executive Yuan recently revised a page of its Web site on ethnic groups in Taiwan, replacing the term “Han” (漢族) with “the rest of the population.” The page, which was updated on March 24, describes the composition of Taiwan’s registered households as indigenous (2.5 percent), foreign origin (1.2 percent) and the rest of the population (96.2 percent). The change was picked up by a social media user and amplified by local media, sparking heated discussion over the weekend. The pan-blue and pro-China camp called it a politically motivated desinicization attempt to obscure the Han Chinese ethnicity of most Taiwanese.
The Legislative Yuan passed an amendment on Friday last week to add four national holidays and make Workers’ Day a national holiday for all sectors — a move referred to as “four plus one.” The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), who used their combined legislative majority to push the bill through its third reading, claim the holidays were chosen based on their inherent significance and social relevance. However, in passing the amendment, they have stuck to the traditional mindset of taking a holiday just for the sake of it, failing to make good use of
RSS