French senators have sponsored a bill that seeks to impress upon the French government the benefits of supporting the inclusion of Taiwan in international bodies.
The sponsors included French senators Joel Guerriau and Alain Richard, both of whom serve on the France-Taiwan Inter-Parliamentary Amity Association.
Richard, who led delegations to Taiwan in 2015 and 2018, earlier this month was pressured by Chinese Ambassador to France Lu Shaye (盧沙野) to cancel a proposed trip to Taiwan, after Lu sent Richard a letter saying that the trip would “affect the ‘status quo’ between Taipei and Beijing.”
Photo: AFP
The bill, if passed, would lead to increased French support for Taiwan’s inclusion in international bodies such as the WHO, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the International Criminal Police Organization.
The bill references the “Taiwan model” of combating COVID-19, which has proved successful because Taiwan, with a population equivalent to that of Australia, has not had to lock down cities and has only recorded 10 deaths.
Despite Taiwan’s warning as early as Dec. 31, 2019, that the coronavirus had the potential for person-to-person transmission, the WHO had ignored the warning and did not consider the disease an international health crisis until the end of January last year, the bill says.
The exclusion of Taiwan from the WHO has been proven to be against the interests of the international community, especially when the WHO has channels to allow the participation of political entities not considered nations, it says.
International bodies, including the World Health Assembly (WHA) and the ICAO, provided ways for Taiwan to participate in both organizations from 2009 to 2016 without changing the “status quo” of cross-strait relations, the bill says.
It also says that Taiwan’s inclusion in international bodies would be a boon for the international community, as its GDP, on a par with that of Sweden, makes it one of the top Asian economies.
Enabling Taiwan’s participation in international bodies, using the model adopted by the WHA and ICAO from 2009 to 2016, should become a pillar of French diplomatic policy, the bill concludes.
CHAMPIONS: President Lai congratulated the players’ outstanding performance, cheering them for marking a new milestone in the nation’s baseball history Taiwan on Sunday won their first Little League Baseball World Series (LLBWS) title in 29 years, as Taipei’s Dong Yuan Elementary School defeated a team from Las Vegas 7-0 in the championship game in South Williamsport, Pennsylvania. It was Taiwan’s first championship in the annual tournament since 1996, ending a nearly three-decade drought. “It has been a very long time ... and we finally made it,” Taiwan manager Lai Min-nan (賴敏男) said after the game. Lai said he last managed a Dong Yuan team in at the South Williamsport in 2015, when they were eliminated after four games. “There is
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) is expected to start construction of its 1.4-nanometer chip manufacturing facilities at the Central Taiwan Science Park (CTSP, 中部科學園區) as early as October, the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) reported yesterday, citing the park administration. TSMC acquired land for the second phase of the park’s expansion in Taichung in June. Large cement, construction and facility engineering companies in central Taiwan have reportedly been receiving bids for TSMC-related projects, the report said. Supply-chain firms estimated that the business opportunities for engineering, equipment and materials supply, and back-end packaging and testing could reach as high as
POWER PLANT POLL: The TPP said the number of ‘yes’ votes showed that the energy policy should be corrected, and the KMT said the result was a win for the people’s voice The government does not rule out advanced nuclear energy generation if it meets the government’s three prerequisites, President William Lai (賴清德) said last night after the number of votes in favor of restarting a nuclear power plant outnumbered the “no” votes in a referendum yesterday. The referendum failed to pass, despite getting more “yes” votes, as the Referendum Act (公民投票法) states that the vote would only pass if the votes in favor account for more than one-fourth of the total number of eligible voters and outnumber the opposing votes. Yesterday’s referendum question was: “Do you agree that the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant
Democratic nations should refrain from attending China’s upcoming large-scale military parade, which Beijing could use to sow discord among democracies, Mainland Affairs Council Deputy Minister Shen You-chung (沈有忠) said. China is scheduled to stage the parade on Wednesday next week to mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s surrender in World War II. The event is expected to mobilize tens of thousands of participants and prominently showcase China’s military hardware. Speaking at a symposium in Taichung on Thursday, Shen said that Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) recently met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a visit to New Delhi.
RSS