On Tuesday, Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib expressed his support for Taiwan on Twitter amid an outbreak of COVID-19 in the nation. In a reference clearly targeted at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hrib wrote: “I am appalled that politics is obstructing the delivery of vaccines to Taiwan. Prague supports Taiwan and our sister city Taipei.” Hrib is known to be friendly toward Taiwan, as are some other Czech politicians, including Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, who declared “I am a Taiwanese” in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei on Sept. 1 last year.
For that, he was threatened by Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), and even though Wang, at the time visiting Europe, was subsequently asked to avoid such behavior, there was little pushback from European leaders.
On Wednesday last week, Minister of Foreign Affairs Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) attended a forum organized by the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague, prompting a complaint from the Chinese embassy in Prague. Czech lawmaker Jakub Janda, the center’s executive director, responded curtly to the complaint on Twitter: “We do not care about your opinion on our event, you will not dictate who our friends & guest are. Taiwan is our ally.”
These are small indications that the worm is turning. If politicians, such as Taiwan’s friends in Prague, are showing their growing distaste for the CCP’s bullying and domineering ways, then so, at long last, are those on the bigger stage of major international forums such as the G7 summit that concluded on Sunday. In the summit’s joint communique, the US and European participants delivered a historic rebuke of China and — significantly — mentioned Taiwan, the first time G7 leaders have done so.
Taiwan’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co in international supply chains, exacerbated by awareness of the need to reorganize and protect them, have contributed to raising the nation’s profile on the global stage.
However, to a large degree, it is the CCP’s threatening behavior and its “wolf warrior diplomacy” that have placed such intense scrutiny on Taiwan as an exemplar of democratic values, and the importance of its geopolitical and technological strategic value for an international community increasingly concerned over China’s rise.
Taiwan has long known the CCP to be a wolf in sheep’s clothing, but Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has allowed the facade to slip, revealing its true nature to the rest of the world. Xi’s recent urging of officials to soften the party’s image and make it more “trustworthy, lovable and respectable” are remarkable in how blind they are to the degree to which trust in the CCP has deteriorated. If the wolf attempts to drape the wool back over its shoulders, it will look foolish. The world knows what lies beneath.
Prior to the pandemic, Xi was making considerable headway in portraying China and its proposed China-centric international world order as an alternative to the US-led order to which the major European democracies adhered. Especially with former US president Donald Trump pulling out of international alliances, Xi was laying the foundations to depict China as a responsible member of the international community capable of assuming a leading role on issues such as multilateral cooperation, financial stability and global warming. The G7 joint communique signals that this attempt is dead in the water.
It would be naive to think that all was rosy within the EU, and in its relationship with the US, as the bloc is unsure of the US’ ability to continue being a stable and reliable ally, following the stress tests placed on that relationship by Trump’s isolationism. However, the CCP is the fresh mortar holding the shaky edifice together: Xi has given them a common cause.
Eating at a breakfast shop the other day, I turned to an old man sitting at the table next to mine. “Hey, did you hear that the Legislative Yuan passed a bill to give everyone NT$10,000 [US$340]?” I said, pointing to a newspaper headline. The old man cursed, then said: “Yeah, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] canceled the NT$100 billion subsidy for Taiwan Power Co and announced they would give everyone NT$10,000 instead. “Nice. Now they are saying that if electricity prices go up, we can just use that cash to pay for it,” he said. “I have no time for drivel like
Young supporters of former Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) chairman Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) were detained for posting the names and photographs of judges and prosecutors believed to be overseeing the Core Pacific City redevelopment corruption case. The supporters should be held responsible for their actions. As for Ko’s successor, TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌), he should reflect on whether his own comments are provocative and whether his statements might be misunderstood. Huang needs to apologize to the public and the judiciary. In the article, “Why does sorry seem to be the hardest word?” the late political commentator Nan Fang Shuo (南方朔) wrote
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) reportedly told the EU’s top diplomat that China does not want Russia to lose in Ukraine, because the US could shift its focus to countering Beijing. Wang made the comment while meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas on July 2 at the 13th China-EU High-Level Strategic Dialogue in Brussels, the South China Morning Post and CNN reported. Although contrary to China’s claim of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, such a frank remark suggests Beijing might prefer a protracted war to keep the US from focusing on
There are no obvious connections between the 7-Eleven retail chain in Japan and the Philippines’ national security concerns in the South China Sea. Here is one, one that also takes in Canadian Broadcasting Corp (CBC), the government of Denmark and Taiwanese plastic surgeons on the way. Japan’s 7-Eleven on Friday last week posted on social media an image of uniforms worn by the chain store’s employees in various locations, including Taiwan, the US, Hawaii, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Cambodia and the Philippines. If this was intended to promote a sense of camaraderie within the 7-Eleven family, it backfired. Taiwan was tagged with the
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