Taiwan has been widely recognized for its successful management of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in the first year. While the rest of the world struggled with the virus, Taiwan had the lowest per capita infection rates in the world, at least until April 2021. Throughout this period, Taiwanese were able to go to restaurants and bars, travel and attend public events.
Despite the initial success, attributed to a combination of lessons learned from SARS and timely case-related measures, a public opinion poll showed that Taiwanese were dissatisfied with their government’s overall response to the pandemic.
The Sinophone Borderlands online poll surveyed more than 1,350 Taiwanese in the summer of last year about their perceptions of the handling of the pandemic inside and outside Taiwan. The survey showed that only 21 percent approved of the government’s response to the pandemic, while 54 percent were dissatisfied.
As for the phone tracking, while it initially appeared that Taiwanese agreed with it to prevent the spread of the virus, the data showed that by last summer, only 29 percent agreed with such practices, 38 percent were in the middle and 33 percent disagreed. Interestingly, about 50 percent of respondents thought the EU and the US were much more successful in dealing with the pandemic.
China, on the other hand, did much worse than Taiwan, with 64 percent of respondents believing it handled the pandemic badly.
The survey also suggested that Taiwanese are more inclined to blame China for the spread of the virus, as evidenced by the 43 percent who believed COVID-19 was artificially created in a Chinese lab and deliberately spread.
Chinese narratives claiming that COVID-19 was brought to China by the US military in 2019 convinced only 14 percent.
Regarding news about transmission of the virus, 24 percent believed that COVID-19 jumped naturally from animals to humans, 34 percent do not believe so and 41 percent were undecided.
In the case of vaccines, respondents considered them the best way to defeat the pandemic, with only 17 percent disagreeing.
In 2021, when the number of infections rose from single digits to more than 15,000 in August and the number of deaths jumped to more than 700 within just a few weeks, only about 1 percent of Taiwan’s 23.5 million people had been vaccinated. This might have been the reason for such a strong push to obtain vaccines.
However, this task proved particularly difficult, given a global vaccine shortage, Taiwan’s limited international recognition and exclusion from discussions on global health issues.
When Taiwan announced the tightening of restrictions in May 2021, China offered Taiwan vaccines from German drug manufacturer BioNTech through Shanghai Fosun Pharmaceutical Group. The government rejected the offer, seeing it as an attempt by Beijing to force Taiwan to rely on China for access to vaccines.
Several opposition figures, mostly from the more China-friendly Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), called on the government to make a deal with China and import the vaccines, as did Hon Hai Precision Industry Co founder Terry Gou (郭台銘) and Buddhist charity Fo Guang Shan.
However, the majority of Taiwanese distrusted Chinese vaccines. The survey showed that only 19 percent were willing to get a Chinese-made vaccine. Similar results were obtained for vaccines from Russia and India, with more than 70 percent not wanting them. On the other hand, a strong preference was shown for vaccines from the US, the EU, Japan and the UK.
The vaccines that Taiwan eventually received were from Japan, the US and the EU, including some individual EU member states. These were also the places indicated by people as most helpful during the pandemic — Japan by 88 percent, the US by 82 percent and the EU by 66 percent.
In the case of China, only 23 percent felt that it had helped Taiwan in its fight against the pandemic, despite Beijing’s efforts to build an image of a charitable motherland.
Although Taiwan’s successful handling of the pandemic received world acclaim, Taiwanese tend to view their government’s actions rather negatively. In contrast, the West’s response to the pandemic is seen in a much more positive light, although confirmed COVID-19 deaths per capita in the US and the EU far exceed the figures in Taiwan.
Kristina Kironska is advocacy director at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies and an assistant professor at Palacky University Olomouc in the Czech Republic. Eunika Rejtova is a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies. The views and opinions expressed in the article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any organization or other entity.
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