The Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) has been giving daily COVID-19 updates for almost four months, and on several occasions when major developments have arisen, the news conferences have attracted large numbers of viewers.
The entire nation is anxious about the pandemic, and interest in the latest news has become a part of daily life. Watching the center’s daily news conferences has become something of a national ritual.
The pandemic has stabilized within Taiwan due to the admirable efforts of each person living in the nation conducting themselves with the utmost responsibility, and in certain cases making considerable sacrifices within their lives.
However, the current lockdown cannot continue indefinitely, and there will eventually come a day when Taiwan will have to open up again.
The nation has been lulled into a sense of security about having thus far kept the worst of the pandemic at bay, and there is a danger that Taiwanese might have let their guard down as a consequence.
During the CECC news conference on Sunday last week, a reporter asked the center to confirm whether a research team from Stanford University was seeking to work with Taiwan on testing a protocol for safe international travel during the pandemic.
There has also been talk of some countries forming “pandemic travel bubbles” and air corridors between themselves.
These developments suggest that reopening borders is an unavoidable trend, but questions remain over when, how, to what degree and with whom this reopening is to occur.
In Taiwan, people cannot rest on the laurels of their own pandemic response success.
It is good that the daily CECC news conferences keep everyone up to speed on the number of new confirmed cases and deaths, but Taiwanese cannot close themselves off to what is happening in other countries.
Since Taiwan cannot avoid reopening its borders, it is important that the public has access to open and transparent information, in real time, so that they can prepare to re-engage with the world.
The set routine for the center’s daily news conferences is to begin by reporting the latest domestic developments.
However, talk of the imminent reopening of borders is largely omitted — perhaps because it would cause an increased sense of unease within the populace that would not be conducive to restoring the fragile economy.
The news conferences should include updates on the pandemic in other countries, as well as major medical and public health discoveries.
Naturally, the focus of these overseas updates should start with news of the nations that Taiwanese regularly travel to and from. These countries can be easily identified from information readily available in annual immigration statistics, and the ones most important to Taiwan should be prioritized in the reports.
One of the most important contributions that the CECC has made during the pandemic — and perhaps one of the reasons that Taiwanese are so proud of how the nation has handled the situation thus far — is the transparent and prompt transmission of information about the pandemic, and how this has bred trust and reduced anxiety.
If the public are to be confident in the future reopening of Taiwan’s borders, they need to start by encouraging it to take an interest in what is happening elsewhere in the world.
Chang Yueh-han is an adjunct assistant professor in Shih Hsin University’s department of journalism.
Translated by Paul Cooper
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs