British Prime Minister Boris Johnson plans to visit India next month to promote the D10 summit of democracies he proposed in May, inviting Australia, India and South Korea to participate in next year’s G7 summit with Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.
This is similar to US president-elect Joe Biden’s promise of a global democracy summit within the first year of his presidency.
Both ideas are to enhance collaboration between countries with similar values to defend democracy and freedom against the challenging authoritarian expansion and democratic regression of China’s sharp power.
Biden wants a “summit of democracy,” rather than a “summit of democracies,” which gives the US flexibility when deciding who to invite. The intention is to increase participation by making it possible to include countries that have been criticized as flawed democracies, such as Peru and the Philippines, allowing them to participate as long as their governments continue to claim to be democratic.
This also opens a door for Taiwan, as the nation’s diplomatic agencies can negotiate with the US to facilitate participation in a model similar to the APEC Informal Leaders’ Meeting, avoiding the country requirement.
As the US, Europe and other countries have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s “grand external propaganda” strategy deliberately criticizes democracy for being incompetent and inferior to authoritarianism. Taiwan is one of the democracies that has far outperformed China in all aspects of pandemic response and economic growth, showing that Beijing’s propaganda is a lie.
As Biden has declared that the US wants to restore its leadership position, and protect and promote global democracy, he clearly should not ignore Taiwan’s existence.
In particular, Taiwan can be said to be on the front line of on the fight against the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) authoritarian expansion.
If the international community remains inactive after watching China destroy Hong Kong’s freedom by enforcing the National Security Law in the territory, Beijing will regard its actions as effective and successful.
As Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for US secretary of state, warned in August when discussing China’s suppression of freedoms in Hong Kong: “If China is getting signals of impunity, then one’s concern is it may think it can do the same with regard to Taiwan.”
In the past few months, the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has sent fighter jets near Taiwan almost daily, attempting to use “gray zone” tactics to exhaust and eventually subdue Taiwan.
If authoritarian China were to annex democratic Taiwan by force, the US’ prestige as the big brother in Asia and the world would be wiped out.
Taiwan is threatened by Chinese military force and needs the support of the US and other democracies. Participation in the Summit of Democracy can bolster ties between Taiwan and countries with shared values, which can counterbalance the CCP’s increasing threat to peace and freedom, and ensure that China’s intimidation of Taiwan fails.
As it would be impossible for autocratic China to participate in the Summit of Democracy, perhaps Taiwan’s president would be allowed informal participation as the leader of a democratic government.
Even if the US, out of concern of irritating China, hoped that Taiwan’s participation would follow the APEC model of sending a representative appointed by the president, that would still be of great significance to Taiwan.
Chen Shih-min is an associate professor at National Taiwan University’s political science department.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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