Totally out of the blue, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus — unbefitting of his position — on April 8 started smearing Taiwan at a news conference, falsely accusing the nation of racial discrimination.
People with a clear understanding of the situation know that Tedros’ accusation was aimed at shifting the pressure arising from US President Donald Trump harsh criticism that the WHO is only capable of pleasing China, which led to the early spread of COVID-19, onto Taiwan.
Moreover, bringing up accusations of racial discrimination could effectively slash confidence in Trump among African Americans ahead of the US presidential election, thus giving China a helping hand in the US-China competition.
Taiwan is no stranger to Tedros’ constant deceptions that have been going on since the beginning of the COVID-19 epidemic spread in early February.
The reason that a microbiologist with a doctorate from the University of Nottingham, and whose mission it is to save lives turned into who he is today is simple: The Ethiopia-born official played a leading role in his nation’s participation in China’s Belt and Road Initiative when he served as Ethiopia’s minister of foreign affairs from 2012 to 2016, and he was instrumental in ensuring that the Ethiopian government continued to receive huge funds from China.
Since the beginning of 2000, Beijing has provided more than US$12.1 billion worth of loans to the Ethopia.
China never provides financial assistance for free. The loans it provides requires the beneficiary — Ethiopia, in this case — to put up its national construction as security.
On the surface, the funds are used to build various kinds of large-scale infrastructure projects, especially for transportation, but almost every aspect of these projects — from contractors to construction materials — require that the Chinese government’s advice and instructions are followed.
During Tedros’ term as foreign minister, Beijing helped Ethiopia construct a railway connecting the capital, Addis Ababa, to the Port of Doraleh in neighboring Djibouti.
The railway enabled the landlocked Ethiopia to deliver goods directly to Djibouti’s seaside port, but China’s real intention was to gain control over four East African nations — Ethiopia to the west, Djibouti to the east, Somalia to the south and Eritrea to the north — in one single effort.
Djibouti is another nation that has fallen prey to the Belt and Road Initiative and the only nation where China has established a military base.
Doing so makes it easier for China to obtain control over the strategic hub located in the center of the region stretching from the Mediterranean through the Red Sea and into the Arabian Sea.
With this context, Tedros’ role becomes much clearer. Simply put, as foreign minister, he did China a tremendous favor by helping it expand its power in Africa.
In return, China supported his bid to become WHO director-general.
Tedros is not qualified for his current position, not because of the color of his skin, but because his intentions have been influenced by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ever since he started to collaborate with China.
Taiwan — along with US and European nations, which have been severely hit by the COVID-19 pandemic — are the real victims of the “information discrimination” that has been the result of Tedros’ covering for China’s atrocities.
Vincent Chen is a manager in the information and communications industry and former publicity section convener of the Wild Lily student movement.
Translated by Chang Ho-ming
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has long been expansionist and contemptuous of international law. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), the CCP regime has become more despotic, coercive and punitive. As part of its strategy to annex Taiwan, Beijing has sought to erase the island democracy’s international identity by bribing countries to sever diplomatic ties with Taipei. One by one, China has peeled away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, leaving just 12 countries (mostly small developing states) and the Vatican recognizing Taiwan as a sovereign nation. Taiwan’s formal international space has shrunk dramatically. Yet even as Beijing has scored diplomatic successes, its overreach
After more than a year of review, the National Security Bureau on Monday said it has completed a sweeping declassification of political archives from the Martial Law period, transferring the full collection to the National Archives Administration under the National Development Council. The move marks another significant step in Taiwan’s long journey toward transitional justice. The newly opened files span the architecture of authoritarian control: internal security and loyalty investigations, intelligence and counterintelligence operations, exit and entry controls, overseas surveillance of Taiwan independence activists, and case materials related to sedition and rebellion charges. For academics of Taiwan’s White Terror era —
After 37 US lawmakers wrote to express concern over legislators’ stalling of critical budgets, Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) pledged to make the Executive Yuan’s proposed NT$1.25 trillion (US$39.7 billion) special defense budget a top priority for legislative review. On Tuesday, it was finally listed on the legislator’s plenary agenda for Friday next week. The special defense budget was proposed by President William Lai’s (賴清德) administration in November last year to enhance the nation’s defense capabilities against external threats from China. However, the legislature, dominated by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), repeatedly blocked its review. The
In her article in Foreign Affairs, “A Perfect Storm for Taiwan in 2026?,” Yun Sun (孫韻), director of the China program at the Stimson Center in Washington, said that the US has grown indifferent to Taiwan, contending that, since it has long been the fear of US intervention — and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) inability to prevail against US forces — that has deterred China from using force against Taiwan, this perceived indifference from the US could lead China to conclude that a window of opportunity for a Taiwan invasion has opened this year. Most notably, she observes that
RSS