Brian Hioeby Brian Hioe
語言:
English
Photo Credit: World Health Organization @ Pregny-Chambésy/Flickr/CC BY 2.0
TAIWAN HAS AGAIN BEEN excluded from participating in the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO is the United Nations’ global body for public health. Nevertheless, of course, Taiwan is excluded from the UN. This year, as in past years, Taiwan was seeking participation in the WHO as an observer.
It proves somewhat surprising that Taiwan is again excluded from the WHA this year. Namely, China did not drop pressure that keeps Taiwan from participating.
KMT chair Cheng Li-wun called on Chinese President Xi Jinping to allow Taiwan to participate in the WHO during their meeting in Beijing in April. This took place in the part of the media that Taiwanese media was prevented from reporting on, as a result of which the DPP has criticized Cheng as perhaps not actually raising this demand, even if the KMT claims that she did.
If Cheng did, in fact, make these comments, Cheng had also called on Xi to allow Taiwan to participate in the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). The ICAO is the UN body that manages global aviation safety. Advocating for Taiwan’s inclusion in the WHO and ICAO has traditionally gone hand-in-hand. Likewise, Cheng called for Taiwan’s inclusion in regional trade blocs such as the RCEP and TPP.
If China still maintained pressure in such a manner as to prevent Taiwanese participation, this indicates a lack of flexibility. In calling for inclusion in the WHO, ICAO, RCEP, and TPP, Cheng would effectively be calling on the CCP to give her a political win that she could use domestically in order to bolster her standing. Had the CCP relented on the issue of Taiwan’s participation in the WHO, this would have lent credence to Cheng’s claim to be able to manage the cross-strait relationship in a way that the DPP is not able to at present–or even other past KMT leaders.
At the same time, perhaps the internal dynamic of China’s bureaucracy prevents this from occurring. One notes that in the course of the Cheng-Xi meeting, China did not dial back air incursions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, the airspace in which planes normally identify themselves for security purposes. In fact, the number of Chinese air incursions actually increased during Cheng’s trip, and that week, was highest during the day of Cheng and Xi’s actual meeting.
In this sense, China would also be missing an opportunity to step into the shoes of the US in depicting itself as a responsible actor in a way that the US is not. After all, one notes that the US increased pressure for Taiwan to join the WHO as an observer in past years. This probably saw its apex in 2020, with US diplomatic accounts tweeting in support of Taiwan’s participation.
That is, Taiwan’s successes in fighting off the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased international attention being focused on Taiwan. As other nations struggled to cope with the pandemic, Taiwan avoided expansive lockdowns disruptive to everyday life, taking action to increase the production of needed medical supplies and using contact tracing as a way to track and isolate transmission chains of COVID-19.
As such, with international praise of Taiwan’s response to COVID-19, the Taiwanese government touted the “Taiwan model” as offering lessons for the COVID-19 responses of other nations. The Taiwanese government, then, sought to call attention to Taiwan’s exclusion from international organizations such as the WHA and WHO, despite the fact that this results in Taiwan being denied access to information about disease outbreaks, and that Taiwan could contribute to international efforts to fight pandemics. In the course of this, the US backed Taiwan’s joining such efforts.
Yet the US, of course, has now withdrawn from the WHO under the Trump administration. In effect, this cedes further ground to China in international institutions. Though Taiwan continues with efforts to participate in the WHO, certainly, without the backing of the US, there will be less momentum, and this may increase China’s influence in international institutions. Indeed, in spite of Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHA, Taiwan conducts meetings on its sidelines annually–Taiwan’s delegation reports increased surveillance and monitoring from China this year.