Greater global action is needed to safeguard human rights as Beijing implements new extradition agreements, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) said yesterday at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) summit in Brussels.
More than 50 lawmakers from 20 nations attended the event, which ran from Friday to yesterday, with Taiwan attending for the first time as a member state.
China’s authoritarian expansion poses a threat to economic, security and democratic norms around the world, Fan said.
Photo courtesy of Fan Yun’s office
UK-based media have reported that Beijing has used its massive investments to influence British politics, while figures sponsored by the Chinese government interfered in the elections of Australia and Canada, she said.
Chinese spies were reportedly also targeting political entities in the US and the Philippines, she said.
Taiwan has embarked on efforts to decouple from the Chinese economy in a bid to reduce the nation’s vulnerability to Beijing’s economic coercion, she said, adding that China last year accounted for 7.5 percent of Taiwan’s foreign investments, down from 84 percent in 2010.
Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) attendance at the summit marked a new high in the international community’s support for Taiwan and its opposition to authoritarian China, Fan said.
She thanked alliance members for being among the first to condemn China’s plot — which it did not act on — to cause a car crash last year targeting Hsiao in Prague.
IPAC is the only international organization that resists China as its core mission, Fan added.
The alliance’s stature has grown substantially among Taiwanese thanks to its opposition to China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758, she said.
Taiwan, which has long stood against the authoritarian threat emanating from China, is able and willing to share its experience with the rest of the world, she said.
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