While Taiwan’s efforts in external engagements face obstructions amid China’s growing assertiveness, the nation has demonstrated agility and flexibility in devising its own model of non-traditional global engagements. To this end, it is vital that Taiwan’s 22 cities and counties be recognized and supported as viable global actors that can meaningfully engage in substantive exchanges with overseas partners.
However, the potential of subnational diplomacy, also known as paradiplomacy, is underutilized in Taiwan, as the distribution of partnerships remains uneven. The six special municipalities have inked a significantly higher number of deals with foreign partners than other cities and counties — perhaps unsurprisingly, Taipei is at the helm with 52 sister cities.
Poor geographical diversification of subnational partners overseas is another hurdle. According to the Taiwan Sister City Database, compiled by the author for the Central European Institute of Asian Studies, more than 40 percent of Taiwan’s approximately 250 sister-city ties are with municipalities in the US. Japan comes in a distant second with 14 percent. These dynamics highlight the importance of strengthening capacity-building efforts among Taiwan’s local governments and proactively identifying viable partners outside the US and Japan.
A growing number of European municipalities have also shown interest in forming subnational partnerships with their Taiwanese counterparts, supporting regional diversification in Taiwan’s paradiplomacy. Most recently, Tainan became a sister city of two new partners in Central and Eastern Europe — Jonava in Lithuania and Lodz in Poland. Innovation and business have emerged as core areas of both engagements.
The Lithuanian city sees itself as a sustainable center of smart industry and has identified smart technology partnerships as a viable area of engagement with its new Asian partner. Meanwhile, the relationship between Lodz and Tainan started with a private-sector partnership between Chimei Food, a Tainan-based company, and the Polish food company Super Drob, which jointly established a new production line in the Polish city.
These cases illustrate a very pragmatic, issue and interest-based model for Taiwan’s new subnational partnerships with Europe, which could yield tangible results and thus render the cooperation more sustainable.
To fully harness the potential of subnational diplomacy, Taiwan should not only expand the geographic, but also the thematic scope of its engagements. Crucially, an effective subnational diplomacy toolbox would not be limited exclusively to sister-city partnerships that facilitate the realization of urban interests. Instead, predominantly rural jurisdictions could also benefit from paradiplomacy. This is already evident in some existing exchanges between Taiwanese local governments and their foreign partners, with Kaohsiung and Japan’s Kumamoto Prefecture serving as a notable example.
While the prefecture recently made headlines as the location of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s first Japanese plant, it had been famous for its watermelons and tomatoes, boasting Japan’s fifth-largest agricultural output. The promotion of agricultural and food trade, as well as agricultural education, is thus a significant topic of exchange between the two municipalities.
Similarly, Pingtung County, which had been a laggard in global engagements, recently intensified its efforts to launch pragmatic cooperation initiatives with its overseas peers. At the county level, the administration of Pingtung County Commissioner Chou Chun-mi (周春米) has pursued new partnerships with Kagoshima, Japan’s second-largest agricultural producer, and Pennsylvania County, Delaware, where both sides focus on exchanging best practices for sustainable development.
Individual townships in Pingtung County have also begun to eye global partnerships. Notably, Changjhih Township (長治) established a sister-city relationship with the Municipality of Dingalan in Aurora Province, Philippines, to promote future exchanges in agriculture and fisheries. This also points to the role that paradiplomacy could play in supporting the economic activities of municipalities.
The discussion about the global actorhood of Taiwanese municipalities does not transpire in a vacuum. Instead, it reflects a broader systemic trend where non-state actors, including subnational governments, play an increasingly important role in global affairs.
China, a systemic rival of Taiwan’s like-minded democratic partners, is actively engaging subnational actors in its influence campaigns, and the emblematic examples of this approach are as diverse as Germany’s self-proclaimed “China City” Duisburg’s controversial smart-cities collaboration with Chinese tech giant Huawei, and elite capture in Fiji through the Pacific nation’s Grand Council of Chiefs. Consequently, supporting Taiwan’s subnational outreach is an effective way of providing municipalities around the globe with a “positive alternative” and countering authoritarian spillover across different levels of governance.
Additionally, the support for subnational diplomacy is an effective investment toward long-term political engagements with Taiwan’s partners. In many political systems, politicians begin their careers at the local level before seeking elected or appointed positions in central government. Therefore, building “Taiwan literacy” through economic and people-to-people links at the municipal level could facilitate the formation of a contingent of political leaders who would be aware of Taiwan’s cause and support it in their capitals in the future.
To fully leverage the potential of Taiwanese cities’ global actorhood, effective coordination between central and local governments is essential. While municipalities need to maintain autonomy and flexibility in fostering partnerships that serve their local needs, central authorities in Taipei should act as a facilitator.
Under the administration of former US president Joe Biden, the US witnessed the emergence of good practices that could be localized and emulated in Taiwan. In 2022, Nina Hachigian became the US Department of State’s first special representative for subnational diplomacy. Additionally, the state department sought to establish international advisers in five US cities to build the capacity of local actors to engage in international work.
Notably, Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs already operates four field offices around the country: in Taichung, Chiayi City, Kaohsiung and Hualien. While their operations currently facilitate consular work, a new ambassador-at-large for subnational diplomacy could also coordinate the work of local policy advisers, supporting cities and counties in international relational and multilevel governance.
Given that party alignments between the 22 cities and counties often lead to tensions between the central and local governments, it is crucial that the foreign ministry plays the role of a catalyst and not a commander in promoting subnational diplomacy. Municipalities have a strong interest in addressing global challenges that impact their residents, creating new jobs by engaging with the world and finding international opportunities for their young people. Effective engagement with the central government should provide them with momentum in effectively engaging the world with newfound capacity, guidance and greater connectivity. Meanwhile, the nation at large would benefit from new avenues to circumvent the efforts to isolate it on the global stage.
As a heterotopia of the Westphalian system, Taiwan must simultaneously adopt a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society approach to asserting its role in global affairs. It is wise to harness subnational diplomacy to advance the nation’s economic, social and political goals.
Marcin Jerzewski is head of the Taiwan office of the European Values Center for Security Policy and fellow at Visegrad Insight.
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