On Tuesday last week, the Presidential Office announced, less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to depart, that President William Lai’s (賴清德) planned official trip to Eswatini, Taiwan’s sole diplomatic ally in Africa, had been delayed. It said that the three island nations of Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar had, without prior notice, revoked the charter plane’s overflight permits following “intense pressure” from China.
Lai, in his capacity as the Republic of China’s (ROC) president, was to attend the 40th anniversary of King Mswati III’s accession. King Mswati visited Taiwan to attend Lai’s inauguration in 2024. This is the first time a president of Taiwan has had to cancel an entire foreign trip due to the denial of airspace access.
Taiwan was supported by diplomatic allies Paraguay and Saint Kitts and Nevis, which condemned China for allegedly pressuring the countries to revoke the overflight permissions. The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), representing lawmakers from more than 40 countries, said that “it is not for Beijing to determine the foreign policy of other countries.”
An EU spokesperson and an unnamed US Department of State spokesperson separately said that decisions about overflight permissions should be made primarily on considerations of aviation safety and operational stability, not to achieve political objectives.
China brushed off the criticisms, citing the “one China” principle. China’s Taiwan Affairs Office spokesperson Zhang Han (張?) said that “there is no such thing” as a president of Taiwan. Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Guo Jiakun (郭嘉昆) said that “the so-called ‘president of the ROC’ has long ceased to exist in the world.”
One would hope that politicians in Taiwan itself could rally behind the ROC president.
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) said it “strongly protests and condemns” Beijing’s actions, but that was diluted by TPP Chairman Huang Kuo-chang’s (黃國昌) shifting the blame for canceling the trip at the last minute to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA), as if it were not responding to a sudden change in circumstances not of its own doing.
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) grudgingly allowed a Democratic Progressive Party-proposed motion condemning Beijing’s actions to pass in the legislature’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee by not objecting to it, but not actually signing it. Although the KMT called the cancelation “deeply regrettable,” and KMT Legislator Hsu Chiao-hsin (徐巧芯) said that she fully supports the president’s right to visit the nation’s diplomatic allies, KMT Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) took Beijing’s side.
She passed the blame directly to Lai for “angering” China and called the canceled visit a “diplomatic defeat.” She reminded the government that the Constitution supports the “one China” principle, adding that “every country in the world” opposes Taiwanese independence, echoing Beijing’s narrative.
This contrasts with the messaging by MOFA, which said that the so-called “one China” principle is not acknowledged by any of the world’s major governments.
Cheng is wrong that “every country in the world” opposes Taiwanese independence and follows the “one China” principle, but the implication — that Taiwan is on the back foot in arguing for its sovereign independence from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) — is correct. What is truly regrettable is that the leader of the main opposition party in Taiwan says this not as a statement of fact or caution that more needs to be done, but as a jibe at Lai for seeking to travel as Taiwan’s president, mocking him for having his plans dashed by Beijing.
The ministry’s position on what the world’s “major governments” say about the “one China” principle is dangerously complacent. Taiwan is not in a strong position.
According to a Lowy Institute report titled Five One-Chinas: The contest to define Taiwan, released in January last year, as of Jan. 1, last year, 142 countries — 74 percent of UN member states — consider Taiwan to be part of China, 119 countries — 62 percent — have endorsed the PRC’s “one China” principle, and 95 countries — 49 percent — support PRC efforts to “achieve national reunification.”
This support for “national reunification” comes without specifying that these efforts should be peaceful, “arguably consenting to the PRC using force to take control of Taiwan,” the report says.
Cheng’s logic is contradictory. She echoes Beijing’s position that Taiwan has no president, while her party represents the ROC and fields candidates to be elected as its president.
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