Less than a month before the World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting on May 18, the administration of President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) reportedly held clandestine talks with its Chinese counterpart in which Beijing agreed that Taiwan could participate in the WHA meeting as an observer under the name “Chinese Taipei.”
The Ma administration’s decision-making process has not been transparent. The government continues to prevaricate on reports that it held secret talks with China. China appears to be offering an olive branch by giving Taiwan the green light to participate in the WHA meeting. However, the public does not know what conditions Taiwan had to accept and what price it will have to pay for all this.
The Ma administration decided not to submit an application to the WHA through the nation’s diplomatic allies or on its own. Instead, it pleaded with China — for peace and reached a clandestine agreement with Beijing on the WHA issue. Opposition legislators and independence activists see this as a underground deal made by the Ma administration at the expense of Taiwanese sovereignty.
However, if Taiwan does not insist on applying for WHO membership as a sovereign state, it will not be able to participate in any WHO-related meeting or event under its actual name. Even if the government were to attend the WHA meeting as an observer under the name “Chinese Taipei,” it would not mean that Taiwan would be able to continue to participate in the meeting next year. Taiwan would still have to obtain approval from China before it could participate in the international health body.
China has employed the carrot-and-stick approach in dealing with Taiwanese affairs. On the one hand, Beijing gave “Chinese Taipei” some international space to perfunctorily meet the Taiwanese public’s demand for international participation.
On the other hand, Beijing continues to restrict Taiwan’s participation in most international events as part of its efforts to gradually undermine its international status and gain ultimate control. As soon as it becomes an accepted international norm that Chinese approval is a prerequisite for Taiwan’s participation in any global organization, every country will naturally view China as Taiwan’s suzerain, posing a serious challenge to Taiwan’s status as an independent, sovereign state.
The Ma administration’s secret talks with China on Taiwan’s participation in the WHA can be seen as an act of self-denigration. This is not simply a technical negotiation but one involving the nation’s sovereignty and security. Preserving this sovereignty is crucial to Taiwan’s survival. Active supervision of the government is imperative, and the public should demand that the Ma administration disclose the contents of its talks with China to make the decision-making process transparent. Only then will we be able to say that Taiwanese sovereignty and interests have not been sold out.
Chen Lung-chu is president of the Taiwan New Century Foundation.
TRANSLATED BY TED YANG
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
US President Donald Trump’s challenge to domestic American economic-political priorities, and abroad to the global balance of power, are not a threat to the security of Taiwan. Trump’s success can go far to contain the real threat — the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) surge to hegemony — while offering expanded defensive opportunities for Taiwan. In a stunning affirmation of the CCP policy of “forceful reunification,” an obscene euphemism for the invasion of Taiwan and the destruction of its democracy, on March 13, 2024, the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) used Chinese social media platforms to show the first-time linkage of three new
If you had a vision of the future where China did not dominate the global car industry, you can kiss those dreams goodbye. That is because US President Donald Trump’s promised 25 percent tariff on auto imports takes an ax to the only bits of the emerging electric vehicle (EV) supply chain that are not already dominated by Beijing. The biggest losers when the levies take effect this week would be Japan and South Korea. They account for one-third of the cars imported into the US, and as much as two-thirds of those imported from outside North America. (Mexico and Canada, while
The military is conducting its annual Han Kuang exercises in phases. The minister of national defense recently said that this year’s scenarios would simulate defending the nation against possible actions the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) might take in an invasion of Taiwan, making the threat of a speculated Chinese invasion in 2027 a heated agenda item again. That year, also referred to as the “Davidson window,” is named after then-US Indo-Pacific Command Admiral Philip Davidson, who in 2021 warned that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had instructed the PLA to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. Xi in 2017
RSS