Former Fijian prime minister Mahendra Chaudhry spoke at the Yushan Forum in Taipei on Monday, saying that while global conflicts were causing economic strife in the world, Taiwan’s New Southbound Policy (NSP) serves as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific region and offers strategic opportunities for small island nations such as Fiji, as well as support in the fields of public health, education, renewable energy and agricultural technology.
Taiwan does not have official diplomatic relations with Fiji, but it is one of the small island nations covered by the NSP. Chaudhry said that Fiji, as a sovereign nation, should support Taiwan, a sovereign and independent nation deserving of international recognition.
They are welcome words, but Taiwan needs to be realistic about what the voices of small nations can do. It is not all bad news, and the cumulative effect of support from small nations and from the integration within the regional system does strengthen Taiwan’s hand — this is the strategic objective of the NSP — but it must be recognized that, especially in the new world order taking shape around, might often makes right.
Fiji is a case in point. Taiwan’s trade office in Fiji used to be named the Trade Mission of the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the Republic of Fiji. Beijing was not happy about this, and in 2018 under pressure from China, Fiji renamed it to the Taipei Trade Office in Fiji. Following a change of governing party in Fiji to a pro-democratic coalition, the new government reinstated the former name in March 2023. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) lauded this turn of events and praised the Taiwanese officials who had worked to get the name reinstated. The celebrations did not last long. By June that same year, again under pressure from China, Fiji reversed the decision.
In 2021 Lithuania agreed to open a trade office in Vilnius with the name the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania, using the word “Taiwan,” not “Taipei,” in the title. Again, Beijing was not happy, and ties between it and Vilnius became fraught. The Lithuanian government of the time believed that China’s threats should not outweigh its intention to build ties with like-minded nations. Its decision was much lauded in Taiwan. Then came regrets. Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, who came to office in September last year, said that she believed the decision to change the name had been rushed, saying: “I think Lithuania really jumped in front of a train and lost.”
Beijing regards her comments as evidence of readiness to normalize relations between the two countries, MOFA expressed alarm, and the name has yet to be reverted. We shall see.
In his keynote address at the Yushan Forum on Monday, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Polish president Lech Walesa said that the major powers of China, Russia and the US “are struggling to lead the world,” and praised Taiwan for its proven track record of providing great solutions in economics and politics that could be a model for others to follow. Again, these are welcome words, this time from a figure who faced off against a hostile external communist regime and won, but yet we need to be realistic. Walesa spoke of Taiwan leading the way to bring about the “unification of the Chinese people,” which is an interesting turn on the Chinese Communist Party’s narrative, and possibly not what the organizers of the Yushan Forum would have liked to be the main takeaway from the conference, but it speaks of a peaceful, non-communist solution that might have legs. Beijing would not agree.
Appealing to the justice of parity of all nations, regardless of size, or of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s vision of a coordinated strategy for “middle powers,” sounds right, but unfortunately is not realistic. The government is right to seek decoupling from China through policies such as the NSP, and for gaining recognition in the international community, as Chaudhry said should happen, but it takes recognition from major powers such as the US — see Rath Wang’s (王健智) piece on the Formosa Association for Public Affairs’ relaunch of a petition to secure a name change of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office to the “Taiwan Representative Office” on this page — to make any real change.
That is just the world we live in.
On March 22, 2023, at the close of their meeting in Moscow, media microphones were allowed to record Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) telling Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin, “Right now there are changes — the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years — and we are the ones driving these changes together.” Widely read as Xi’s oath to create a China-Russia-dominated world order, it can be considered a high point for the China-Russia-Iran-North Korea (CRINK) informal alliance, which also included the dictatorships of Venezuela and Cuba. China enables and assists Russia’s war against Ukraine and North Korea’s
After thousands of Taiwanese fans poured into the Tokyo Dome to cheer for Taiwan’s national team in the World Baseball Classic’s (WBC) Pool C games, an image of food and drink waste left at the stadium said to have been left by Taiwanese fans began spreading on social media. The image sparked wide debate, only later to be revealed as an artificially generated image. The image caption claimed that “Taiwanese left trash everywhere after watching the game in Tokyo Dome,” and said that one of the “three bad habits” of Taiwanese is littering. However, a reporter from a Japanese media outlet
An article published in the Dec. 12, 1949, edition of the Central Daily News (中央日報) bore a headline with the intimidating phrase: “You Cannot Escape.” The article was about the execution of seven “communist spies,” some say on the basis of forced confessions, at the end of the 713 Penghu Incident. Those were different times, born of political paranoia shortly after the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) relocated to Taiwan following defeat in China by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). The phrase was a warning by the KMT regime to the local populace not to challenge its power or threaten national unity. The
The Iran war has exposed a fundamental vulnerability in the global energy system. The escalating confrontation between Iran, Israel and the US has begun to shake international energy markets, largely because Iran is disrupting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. This narrow waterway carries roughly one-third of the world’s seaborne oil, making it one of the most strategically sensitive energy corridors in the world. Even the possibility of disruption has triggered sharp volatility in global oil prices. The duration and scope of the conflict remain uncertain, with senior US officials offering contradictory signals about how long military operations might continue.
RSS