The 75th World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting is scheduled to take place from May 22 to 28, a meeting at which Taiwan’s return as an observer is becoming increasingly possible.
US Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources Brain McKeon has clearly articulated to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that the US supports Taiwan’s attendance at the meeting with observer status, along with a continued investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2.
This shows that Washington continues to pursue Taiwan’s interests, and that there remains a chance for Taiwan to attend the WHA meeting, despite not having yet received an invitation.
McKeon is of the same rank as US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. Unlike Sherman, who must constantly shuttle between countries, McKeon is responsible for the State Department’s management and resources.
It falls to McKeon to “remind” Tedros of the contingencies attached to US funding of the WHO. This fact is important especially now, given that attendees at the upcoming WHA meeting are to vote to determine whether Tedros should receive a second five-year term.
The intervention of US President Joe Biden’s administration at this crucial time is intended to send a clear message to Tedros about its support for Taiwan’s attendance.
Whether Taiwan can attend with observer nation status, as it has before, depends on whether Tedros issues an invitation. Should Tedros reject the US’ “suggestion,” the administration could ask US allies to not support his reappointment. Another option would be for the US to withhold its membership fees.
Former US president Donald Trump two years ago froze US funding of the WHO. He said that the organization under Tedros had been too willing to take its cues from Beijing and trust its COVID-19 data, a trust that led to rapid spread of the virus.
The state department said that funding would not resume until Tedros stepped down, and it called for an investigation into the origin of SARS-CoV-2.
Trump reasoned that the US contributed 10 times as much as China to the organization, between US$400 million to US$500 million, or about 14 percent of the WHO’s budget, funding that was of crucial importance to the WHO.
When appeals for reform of the institution were not met with a substantial response, the Trump administration announced in July 2020 that it would be withdrawing from the WHO, as of a year later, and proposed the creation of a new international health organization to replace the WHO.
Biden reversed the decision on his first day in office and WHO funding resumed. However, his administration continues to pressure the health body to reform and to investigate the origins of the virus.
There was an evident change in Tedros’ China-friendly stance. In October last year, the WHO said it would form a task force to open a second round of investigations on the virus’ origin, and Tedros followed the US stance that it might have leaked from a Wuhan laboratory, asking China to make its data available to the investigation.
The growing distance between Tedros and China was suggested when Beijing did not indicate support for Tedros’ reappointment.
Whether Tedros continues to be Beijing’s pawn or sides with the West could determine whether Taiwan attends next month’s WHA meeting.
Chen Yung-chang is a company manager.
Translated by Paul Cooper
The Comedy Club on Fuxing N Road in Taipei was vandalized with paint bombs mixed with feces on May 29, allegedly because one of its performers had satirized Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). The incident has triggered concerns about the growing threat from China’s cross-border repression within Taiwan. On the day of the attack, a comedian surnamed Huang (黃), who is known for mocking Xi, was the headline performer. The Comedy Club founder said the assault was obviously politically motivated. China, which Freedom House said “conducts the most sophisticated, extensive and far-reaching campaign of transnational repression in the world,” has
China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhu Fenglian (朱鳳蓮) at a press conference last week repeated the same, tired line, claiming that Taiwan’s future should be “decided jointly by the more than 1.4 billion Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots.” The statement is absurd. Virtually every word is incorrect, with some parts mistaken to an astonishing degree. First, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never included Taiwan. When the Republic of China’s (ROC) original five-colored flag was established in 1912, Taiwan was still under Japanese rule. When the PRC was founded in 1949, Taiwan was under the control of president Chiang
Following the outbreak of conflict in Iran, TikTok was flooded with videos targeting Taiwanese users. Many featured artificial intelligence (AI)-generated anchors posing as Taiwanese broadcasters with localized traditional Chinese subtitles. The videos warned of imminent social collapse due to liquefied natural gas shortages, blamed the Democratic Progressive Party and its alleged failed energy policies for a fabricated crisis, and used recycled footage from unrelated events to create the impression Taiwan stood on the edge of systemic breakdown. By saturating the information environment with falsehoods or selectively edited material designed to trigger emotional responses, malign actors can exploit cognitive vulnerabilities and
Taiwan’s leading position in the global semiconductor industry is not, as some claim, based on misconceptions, a result of “stealing.” It was built upon formal, transparent and costly technology transfer agreements between the Taiwanese government and US enterprises half a century ago. According to the oral history of Hu Ding-hua (胡定華), a pioneer in Taiwan’s semiconductor industry, the origin of Taiwan’s integrated circuit (IC) technology dates back to the “IC pilot factory” in the 1970s. The implementation of this project fully complied with international commercial standards and legal procedures. First, the project completed formal contract signing and payment. In 1975,
RSS