Taiwan should strive to maintain its hard-won, positive image in France, which has a deeper understanding and wider coverage of the nation’s situation, Representative to France Francois Wu (吳志中) said.
Wu made the remark in an interview with the Chinese-language Liberty Times (the sister paper of the Taipei Times) that was posted online yesterday.
Speaking about the change in Taiwan’s image in France in recent years, Wu, who has served as Taiwan’s envoy to Paris since 2018, said that French media report about Taiwan almost 24 hours a day.
Photo: Chen Yu-jui, Taipei Times
These reports include Taiwan’s successful experience in tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, its quick response in manufacturing and providing masks to Europe and the US, and the importance of Taiwan in the semiconductor industry, he said.
“Everyone suddenly saw and heard about Taiwan, and most of the reports were positive. They also knew that Taiwan was bullied by bullies every day,” he said.
French President Emmanuel Macron’s appointment of his former Africa adviser, Franck Paris, as the new director of the French Office in Taipei shows the importance that Paris places on the Indo-Pacific region, Wu said.
Moreover, France earlier this month passed a defense budget in which it pledged to defend freedom of navigation in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, he said.
The world is standing with Taiwan to safeguard regional peace and deter China, because it is also in its interest to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, he said.
On the business front, Taiwanese electric vehicle battery maker ProLogium Technology Co in May announced that it would invest 5.2 billion euros (US$5.7 billion) to build a gigafactory and research and development center in Dunkirk, with the French government providing an initial subsidy of 1.5 billion euros, Wu said.
Antoine Bondaz, director of the Taiwan Program at the Paris-based Foundation for Strategic Research, said that size of the Taiwanese investment is equivalent to half of the total investment of all companies from China and Hong Kong of 11.7 billion euros in the past 25 years.
“I hope political leaders are aware of the facts presented by these data,” he said.
Taiwan’s strength in economy and trade, public health, democracy and freedom has made the nation an inspiring story, Wu said.
While Taiwan’s visibility has been heightened, China’s image in France has been tarnished by its “wolf warrior diplomacy,” intimidating military exercises, erosion of democracy in Hong Kong, labor camps in Xinjing and destruction of Tibetan culture, Wu said.
Taiwan should maintain its hard-won image, he said.
If Taiwan were one day to side with Beijing under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) rule, countries that had taken actions to support Taiwan would not want to risk facing China’s retaliation again, he said.
France is not “anti-China,” but, like many others, hopes China can be peaceful, contribute to humanity and respect different voices instead of building up its military to threaten others, he said.
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