A confidential WHO memo reminding its agencies that Taiwan is a “Province of China” has come to light and thrown a spanner in the works for President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who has taken great pride in the nation’s renewed interaction with the UN organization. His administration is now hurriedly spinning the situation, with the Cabinet, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Department of Health “clarifying” the situation and saying they will file a protest with the WHO. However, protesting now about an internal document that was sent out by the office of WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍) on Sept. 14 last year is too little, too late.
When Taiwan exited the UN in 1971, it lost its WHO membership. During the SARS epidemic in 2003, which seriously affected the nation, exclusion from the international disease prevention system led to persistent domestic demands for renewed membership in the WHO.
In 2009, Chan’s office sent a letter to the Department of Health, addressing its head as “minister,” and informing the department that the nation would be party to the International Health Regulations (IHR). Taiwan was also invited to attend the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer.
At the time, the WHO acceded to China’s request that all data and information intended for Taiwan should first pass through China. This odd arrangement, which is unique among all other member states and observers, raised questions about whether China and the WHO had struck a deal under the table. At the time, a memorandum of understanding between China and the WHO caused heated debate, but no evidence of a secret arrangement was ever found.
However, the secret internal WHO memo obtained by Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Kuan Bi-ling (管碧玲), in which Chan stated that the WHO’s implementation of the IHR must comply with WHA resolution 25.1, which defines Taiwan as a “Province of China,” offers proof that a 2005 memorandum of understanding between the WHO and China seemingly granted China suzerainty over Taiwan.
After the internal memo was revealed, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledged that it had received the document before the media had, but had not taken any action. The government’s inaction should be decried as incompetence, pure and simple, and its decision to cover up the incident was negligence of duty. Nothing happened until a legislator and the media revealed the truth about the government’s complicit participation: It was happy to let the WHO refer to Taiwan as a province of China, so long as the Taiwanese public knew nothing about it.
The Ma administration has always believed that as long as it managed to improve cross-strait relations, Taiwan would be able to participate in more international organizations. It also believed that insisting on the so-called “1992 consensus” would facilitate improved cross-strait relations, regardless of the fact that China and the world see the “consensus” as another word for the “one China” principle.
The confidential WHO memo has revealed Ma and his administration are deceiving both themselves and the public, while the rest of world views the Taiwanese representative not as an independent national observer, but rather a representative of a Chinese province.
Whether Taiwan is ruled by a DPP or a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) administration, participation in international organizations will be difficult. The Ma administration’s only concern is the superficial scoring of political points — it doesn’t care about practical results. This not only hurts Taiwanese sovereignty, but is also eroding public trust in the government.
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
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