While countries worldwide are fighting the havoc caused by the spread of the Chinese coronavirus, Beijing is busy playing games to suppress Taiwan’s visibility on the international stage as the nation has gained attention for its superb campaign to protect its citizens from the virus.
At the onset of the pandemic in late December last year, pundits predicted that Taiwan would be the second large red zone following China.
By the middle of last month, those predictions were utterly debunked. At the time, Taiwan registered fewer than 40 cases and the nation has since expeditiously geared up the production and supply of masks, enough to cover all citizens in an orderly way.
Against this backdrop, Johns Hopkins University’s global pandemic monitoring Web site, maintained by the school’s center for systems science and engineering, had since its inception in early January identified Taiwan as a nation separate from China.
On March 11, within fewer than 12 hours, a chain of peculiar events occurred. Taiwan’s identity was first changed to “Taipei and environs,” but still under the column of country. Then, within an hour or so, the new identification was completely erased and moved, like Hong Kong, to a subentry under China.
Another two to three hours passed, Taiwan was again placed back in the country column. This time, it was listed as “Taiwan,” but with an asterisk. There was no special note as to the meaning of the superscript asterisk.
Clearly, the group at Johns Hopkins responsible for the map was under pressure from multiple sides, including, without doubt, Beijing.
Evidently, Taiwan receiving a thumbs-up performance in fighting the viral transmission surprises almost all international observers. The surprise, initially only expressed online, eventually turned into praise voiced openly in print.
It is the latter that irritates China, a self-proclaimed, rather jealous big brother. In Beijing’s cranial sac, Taiwan had belonged for eons to China. Taiwan is not allowed to stand on its own merits.
What Taiwan has uniquely achieved in this seemly insurmountable battle is simply too thorny for Beijing to swallow.
Kengchi Goah is a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Public Policy Council in the US.
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