A surge in local COVID-19 infections over the past week has dented the government’s much-lauded success in containing the virus and revealed a critical flaw in Taiwan’s fight against the disease: an inadequate vaccine rollout.
The lack of a domestically produced vaccine, difficulty obtaining foreign jabs due to governments prioritizing their own citizens, vaccine hoarding by some countries and suspected meddling by Beijing to obstruct vaccine sales to Taiwan have stymied Taipei’s efforts to secure a sufficient amount of COVID-19 vaccine doses.
Meanwhile, the reluctance of Taiwanese to get the relatively few available AstraZeneca jabs doused the government’s attempts to kick-start a vaccination program.
However, with the surge in local cases, Taiwanese now have a renewed sense of urgency to get vaccinated, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spied an opportunity in Taiwan’s misfortune.
The CCP has offered its Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine to Taiwan, but the government has turned it down, not only due to questions over the vaccine’s effectiveness, but also due to concerns over the CCP’s “vaccine diplomacy” and “united front” motivations.
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) spokeswoman Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) on Monday sought to exploit the outbreak for CCP propaganda purposes, saying that “Taiwan compatriots” — whom she called “our flesh and blood relatives” — are eager to use vaccines from China and that “it is imperative to remove Taiwan’s artificial political barriers.”
With Zhu pretending that Beijing is acting from a purely humanitarian position devoid of political motives, China’s propaganda machine has rammed home the CCP’s message for international consumption.
The English-language edition of the Global Times said: “Despite the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] authorities’ discrimination propaganda and extremely hostile policies against [China], [Beijing] this time also showed its kindness based on humanitarian principles and the family-style affection [by offering the Sinopharm vaccine].”
The China Unification Promotion Party last week called on the government to accept the vaccine, which it said China has offered out of “goodwill” and for the sake of “maintaining Taiwanese’s health and well-being.” Otherwise, the DPP would be “responsible for deaths and health problems among Taiwanese, and cause the outbreak to deteriorate,” it said.
Beijing desires the DPP’s compliance because it wants to show the world how it is helping a “much-loved,” if “wayward,” “local” government.
Fostering the impression that Beijing, with its authoritarian governance and greater resources, is more capable than the Taiwanese government in containing the virus would be a public relations coup for the CCP.
Mainland Affairs Council spokesman Chiu Chui-cheng (邱垂正) responded to Zhu’s comments by saying that China should not express its “fake concern,” and that Taiwan can obtain more reliable vaccines from the international community as long as China does not obstruct its efforts.
A new batch of more than 400,000 AstraZeneca shots arrived in Taiwan yesterday, and the government is exploring various avenues to secure greater amounts of more effective vaccines from trusted sources — and which come with no strings attached.
However, these, as well as domestically produced vaccines — which President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) has said would be ready by late July — would take time to deploy, whereas the CCP’s offer is already on the table.
Despite what Zhu would have Taiwanese believe, this is a propaganda war, and the CCP is ready to turn up the heat if Taiwan’s outbreak worsens.
The government must fight back and explain to the public why it turned down the CCP’s poisoned offers.
Jan. 1 marks a decade since China repealed its one-child policy. Just 10 days before, Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), who long oversaw the often-brutal enforcement of China’s family-planning rules, died at the age of 96, having never been held accountable for her actions. Obituaries praised Peng for being “reform-minded,” even though, in practice, she only perpetuated an utterly inhumane policy, whose consequences have barely begun to materialize. It was Vice Premier Chen Muhua (陳慕華) who first proposed the one-child policy in 1979, with the endorsement of China’s then-top leaders, Chen Yun (陳雲) and Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平), as a means of avoiding the
As the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) races toward its 2027 modernization goals, most analysts fixate on ship counts, missile ranges and artificial intelligence. Those metrics matter — but they obscure a deeper vulnerability. The true future of the PLA, and by extension Taiwan’s security, might hinge less on hardware than on whether the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) can preserve ideological loyalty inside its own armed forces. Iran’s 1979 revolution demonstrated how even a technologically advanced military can collapse when the social environment surrounding it shifts. That lesson has renewed relevance as fresh unrest shakes Iran today — and it should
In the US’ National Security Strategy (NSS) report released last month, US President Donald Trump offered his interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine. The “Trump Corollary,” presented on page 15, is a distinctly aggressive rebranding of the more than 200-year-old foreign policy position. Beyond reasserting the sovereignty of the western hemisphere against foreign intervention, the document centers on energy and strategic assets, and attempts to redraw the map of the geopolitical landscape more broadly. It is clear that Trump no longer sees the western hemisphere as a peaceful backyard, but rather as the frontier of a new Cold War. In particular,
The last foreign delegation Nicolas Maduro met before he went to bed Friday night (January 2) was led by China’s top Latin America diplomat. “I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi (邱小琪), Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping (習近平),” Venezuela’s soon-to-be ex-president tweeted on Telegram, “and we reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.” Judging by how minutely the Central Intelligence Agency was monitoring Maduro’s every move on Friday, President Trump himself was certainly aware of Maduro’s felicitations to his Chinese guest. Just
RSS