From the COVID-19 pandemic to the tsunami of US trade tariffs unleashed earlier this month, Taiwan is facing enormous, difficult challenges.
The world continues to veer off into conflict and chaos. In the field of medicine and public health, experts used to believe that a global contagion like the Black Plague in the Middle Ages could never happen again, but they were too optimistic.
In 2019, a novel coronavirus — later identified as SARS-CoV-2 — which caused a highly fatal pneumonia during the early strains of the COVID-19 epidemic-turned-pandemic, had incubated and spread rapidly from the city of Wuhan, China, to the rest of the world.
However, the COVID-19 pandemic did not lead to a slowdown in brutal military conflicts, with Myanmar’s civil war and Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine being prime examples of hot, ongoing conflicts.
In the intervening 80 years since the end of World War II — from the imposition and lifting of martial law to the direct election of presidents and the peaceful transitions of power between political parties — Taiwan has become a democracy. More importantly, from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019 through the treacherous waves of tariffs of today, Taiwanese voters have consistently made the right choices in selecting the leaders to weather the storms.
During the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, then-president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) accepted the advice and expert opinions of epidemiologists, closing the borders to countries like China to hold back the spread of the virus in Taiwan. As countries around the world fought for access to limited vaccines, the Tsai administration negotiated and procured the much-needed vaccines, as well as overcame myriad hurdles to develop Taiwan’s own COVID-19 vaccine, the Medigen protein subunit vaccine, ultimately ferrying the nation safely past disaster, while many other countries floundered.
US President Donald Trump was inaugurated to a second term on Jan. 20. On April 2, he announced “reciprocal” tariffs targeting nearly 90 countries, severely damaging US and global financial markets. Trump is using a “double bind” method to try to bring other countries to the negotiating table.
President William Lai (賴清德), relying on his background and expertise as a medical professional, is gradually disarming the crisis. There is no need for Lai to emulate the verbal back-and-forth between Chinese leadership and Trump. Traditionally, the government’s tariffs and trade negotiation representatives have been outstanding, and possess the psychological training and experience to conduct talks successfully. They know the ins and outs of how to deliberate.
Regardless of whether it is negotiations to acquire immunizations or to reduce tariffs, only by setting Taiwan as the foundation for discussions can we obtain an assurance of success and quality.
Chen Chiao-chicy is a professor of psychiatry and an attending physician at Mackay Memorial Hospital’s Department of Psychiatry.
Translated by Tim Smith
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