On March 4, the US House of Representatives passed the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act unopposed with 415 votes, and on March 11, the US Senate passed the act unanimously, thus completing the congressional legislative process. The act would take effect as soon as US President Donald Trump signs it into law.
The act says that US executive agencies should take effective action to help Taiwan strengthen its diplomatic relations and participate in international organizations. This development opens a window of opportunity for Taiwan’s foreign relations.
On the same day that the House passed the act, American Institute in Taiwan Chairman James Moriarty, who was visiting Taiwan as a representative of US executive agencies, met President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in the Presidential Office. At the start of their meeting, Moriarty said that the US would redouble its efforts to expand Taiwan’s participation on the global stage.
This statement shows that support for Taiwan’s participation in the international community is now an issue on which there is a high degree of consensus between the US Republican and Democratic parties and between the legislative and executive branches of the US government.
Trump’s administration has over the past few years approved several laws that are favorable to Taiwan, such as the Taiwan Travel Act and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act. These laws focus on bilateral interaction between Taiwan and the US, including diplomatic and military relations.
The TAIPEI Act takes the US domestic legal framework a step further by actively promoting Taiwan’s foreign relations.
In the past, Taiwan has mainly fought alone to win diplomatic allies. Even if the US supported it, that was only one more country.
The TAIPEI Act encourages US executive agencies to raise Taiwan’s international status within the scope of existing international relations.
This means the US is bringing a crowd of friends to offer their support. The TAIPEI Act is thus a lot stronger than the other laws and has a quite different significance.
No wonder cheers erupted in the House after it unanimously passed the bill, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Twitter that Congress had sent a message to the world that “America stands with Taiwan.”
What “America stands with Taiwan” really means is that “America stands with Taiwan with regard to China.” During the four years so far of Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) administration, China has increased its intimidation of Taiwan and eroded the US’ regional interests by luring Taiwan’s allies away.
When the US calls on its allies to join it in supporting Taiwan, it is also looking out for its own strategic concerns. This is especially true of promoting Taiwan’s participation in international organizations.
In the past few years, China has been gradually working its way into the structures of these organizations. In some cases it has managed to have Chinese citizens appointed to key posts; in others, it has fostered proxies.
As a result, these organizations are becoming less “international” and more “Chinese.” More and more, they are acting as extensions of Beijing’s power.
There could be no clearer example of this than the WHO.
The viral illness that the WHO officially calls COVID-19 — a contraction of “coronavirus disease 2019” — is widely known as “Wuhan pneumonia” in Taiwan, because it started in Wuhan in China’s Hubei Province.
As the virus sweeps across the world, the WHO, which exists to prevent disease and care for people’s health, has instead become an outer “palace guard” for the Chinese government.
The WHO leadership, headed by Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has been in lockstep with China in its announcements about what would become a pandemic.
At the beginning, it underestimated the situation and initially described the then-epidemic’s global risk as “moderate.” When Tedros visited Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on Jan. 28, he implied that some countries had overreacted and expressed his full confidence in China’s ability to prevent the disease and control the epidemic.
Tedros has turned a blind eye to the way the Chinese government has prioritized concealing the extent of the outbreak. After the virus began to spread through countries that have close relations with China, the WHO continued to paper over the cracks.
At the end of last month, Tedros, despite the number of confirmed cases worldwide having reached 80,000, still refused to declare that the epidemic had become a global pandemic.
However, seeing that this position was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, he changed his tune on March 11, when he said that because of “the alarming levels of inaction ... COVID-19 can be characterized as a pandemic.”
Having gone from dragging its feet at the beginning to shifting the blame and even adding insult to injury, it would be difficult for the WHO under Tedros’ leadership to regain the confidence of the international community.
This is what Vice President Chen Chien-jen (陳建仁) was referring to when he said that the WHO’s declaration of a pandemic would “do more harm than good.”
Taiwan, which is excluded from the WHO, takes the global body’s underestimation of the pandemic and its servility to China as a negative example and a warning.
The “five proactive measures” Tsai’s government announced on Thursday last week would allow Taiwan to avoid the kind of major outbreak crises that are happening in some other countries.
Many disease-prevention measures that Taiwan has taken have been widely reported by international media, making its achievements a model for other countries to learn from.
Taiwan is both capable and willing to contribute to global public health. Notably, the sharp contrast between Taiwan’s image in international disease prevention and that of the WHO leadership, along with the passage of the US’ TAIPEI Act, presents a key opportunity for Taiwan to redouble its efforts.
From former WHO director-general Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) to her successor, Tedros, China’s growing domination of the WHO’s organizational structures has long been worrisome for many countries, but most of them have been willing to go along with it.
However, now that countries around the world are feeling the pain of the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO is bound to be blamed for it. Consequently, proposals to re-evaluate and reorganize the WHO could be raised at any time, as could a motion of no confidence in Tedros.
Tsai’s government should seize the opportunity presented by this prevailing mood to redouble its efforts by taking “proactive measures” in its campaign for participation in the WHO.
It should leave no stone unturned in its efforts to gain more allies, including the network of Western countries that the US can mobilize and those with which Taiwan can cooperate through their geopolitical relations with Taiwan’s diplomatic partner countries.
Above all, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and related departments should jump into action. Submitting articles to overseas media or posting messages on Twitter will not be enough.
Taiwan’s participation in the WHO is not just a question of one nation’s participation in international affairs. It could be a key factor for reforming the WHO and getting it back on track.
Translated by Julian Clegg
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