Taiwan is to pursue and expand ties with like-minded countries to counter Beijing’s poaching, rather than reactively defending existing relationships with diplomatic allies, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) said earlier this month.
He made the remarks in a video interview released earlier this month by the YouTube channel Hsiaochun Taiwan Plus (筱君台灣PLUS), saying that Taipei’s Diplomatic Allies Prosperity Project would showcase the advantages of being Taiwan’s friend to the world.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is making a pivot from a “defensive” diplomatic strategy to an “offensive” one, emphasizing developing links with old and new friends, he said.
Photo: Huang Yun-hsuan, Taipei Times
That is because the former strategy of passively guarding existing ties against China’s overtures has resulted in a steady loss of diplomatic allies, Lin said.
Taiwan’s rising power and relative importance to the world have enabled the ministry to use the nation’s economic, military and cultural assets in burnishing its international profile, he said.
Foreign governments are coming to the realization that developing relations with Taiwan would provide them with insight on how to handle China and a chance to secure the first island chain, Lin said.
Aggressive diplomacy has already blunted China’s legal warfare against Taiwan, as the European Parliament voted to condemn Beijing’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758, he said.
The EU legislative body’s adaptation of the text denouncing the resolution’s misinterpretation stemmed from the ministry’s years of work with the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Lin said.
Beijing was forced to reiterate its “one China” principle with the more receptive leaders of the so-called global south, which did little to cover its loss, he said.
The overwhelming consensus among Taiwanese and the international community is that Taiwan does not belong to the People’s Republic of China, and that Taiwan is not the problem of the Taiwan Strait, but the solution to the “China problem,” Lin said.
European officials have acknowledged to their Taiwanese counterparts that they understand that cooperation with Taiwan is a key to contain China’s and Russia’s authoritarian expansionism, he said
The Chinese Communist Party deems Taiwan to be an enemy, as evidenced by Chinese public figures calling for the Chinese military to “seize the island and wipe out the people” should it invade the nation, Lin said.
Taiwanese must face the reality that appeasing China would not save them, and that signing peace treaties with Beijing would leave Taiwan disarmed and at China’s mercy, he said.
Taiwan should seek to help China’s integration into the global community, he said, adding that the world would welcome Beijing with open arms if it demonstrates peaceful intentions and goodwill.
Taipei and Washington achieved consensus on tariffs, as the two sides are working on the exchange and texts connected to trade matters, he said.
Taiwan and the US are in fundamental agreement about bilateral trade due to shared interests, and changes in Washington’s political leadership would not affect it negatively, he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) initiation of a telephone call last month with Washington indicated that he was more eager to engage in talks than US President Donald Trump, Lin said.
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