Japanese media on Sunday last week reported on speculation that the US and Taiwan might discuss establishing a new international health organization, which the Taiwanese government has denied. If true, the rumors would indicate that the US — which initiated an exit from the WHO on July 7 — was looking to replace the functions of the WHO and seeking partners to join the new group.
If such talks are not taking place, they should be. The WHO was formed in 1948 after discussions with delegations from the Republic of China (ROC), Norway and Brazil with the goal of “the attainment by all peoples of the highest possible level of health.” When the ROC on Oct. 25, 1971, was expelled from the UN, the People’s Republic of China also took its place in the WHO.
Unlike Taiwan, which participated in the WHO to improve health conditions in countries left devastated in the wake of World War II, China has historically used international organizations like the WHO to expand its influence — which is “simply what authoritarian regimes do,” as Bloomberg wrote on April 9.
The Bloomberg article argued that China should remain in the WHO, since “most new infectious diseases begin somewhere in China,” and the world needs access to information about those illnesses and needs to help China combat them to curb their spread.
The piece highlighted the dangerous aspects in China’s response to outbreaks. It took two months after the 2003 SARS outbreak for the WHO to allow doctors into China, and in June it was reported that China had withheld information about COVID-19 in the early stages of the outbreak, allowing its spread to disastrous proportions. There have also been speculations around the deaths of whistle-blowers in China who attempted to report on the threat of COVID-19, suggesting they were silenced by the government.
This too is simply what authoritarian regimes do.
Taiwan is a global health leader, as demonstrated by its effective handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and affirmed by US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar’s visit to Taipei earlier this week, during which he praised the nation’s health achievements and its aid to other countries.
Taiwan benefited greatly from the WHO during its two decades as a member, when the US and the UN set up milk stations for undernourished children in Taiwan and helped it fight devastating illnesses such as blackfoot disease and malaria. Taiwan has since turned the tables on infectious diseases, and today provides humanitarian aid to disadvantaged countries through the International Cooperation and Development Fund.
Whereas the US Seventh Fleet had previously trained Taiwanese doctors through its prestigious Naval Medical Research Unit Two, which was once based on the National Taiwan University campus, Taiwan now sends its medical professionals abroad to train doctors.
The benefits of cooperating with Taiwan on medical research and preventive medicine cannot be overstated. Yet, Chinese influence over the WHO continues to prevent Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the organization.
The US does not need to leave the WHO — a decision that can be reversed before July 6 next year — but establishing an organization in which Taiwan can participate, and in which no individual nation can obstruct other members’ participation, would benefit world health. The US could make clear to Beijing that a new organization is not intended as a vindictive move — and China could join if it wished — but it must also make clear that the organization would give precedence to health over politics.
The WHO is a political monstrosity with directors-general, decisionmaking committees, a huge headquarters and a massive annual travel budget. What the world really needs from a global health organization is meetings of like-minded, health-focused medical professionals who can meet regularly to share ideas and solve problems — not create them.
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