With the 72nd Regular Session of the UN General Assembly having opened several weeks ago, it is a good time to revisit Taiwan’s campaign to join the annual WHO meeting in Geneva, Switzerland — the World Health Assembly (WHA) — as an observer.
Getting Taiwan back into the WHA is a tough call. China blocks Taiwan from attending the meeting and plays politics with the lives of the 23 million Taiwanese.
Who can forget the Chinese pressure that blocked direct WHO assistance from reaching Taiwan during the 2003 SARS crisis? China’s behavior is utterly contemptible.
The WHO has effectively taken its hands off of Taiwan’s ambitions to join the body. It has decided to let Taiwan and the People’s Republic of China work it out among themselves.
China’s diplomatic obstructionism continues to prevent Taiwan from gaining WHO membership. Where does the nation go from here?
In March, I wrote in the Taipei Times that “It behooves the US to tell Beijing that if it does not let Taiwan attend the WHA meeting, Washington will send the US secretary of Health and Human Services to Taiwan to experience firsthand how Taiwan is battling its perennial challenge of avian flu outbreaks” (“US must aid Taiwan’s WHO entry,” Mar. 3, page 8).
Based on information and knowledge of insiders, the US is committed to seeing Taiwan being represented in the WHO — and it has been for the better part of the past two decades.
The Formosan Association for Public Affairs has been promoting Taiwan’s bid for WHO membership since the late 1990s. The campaign culminated in binding legislation passing both the US House of Representatives and US Senate in 2004 authorizing the US secretary of state to initiate a plan to endorse and obtain observer status for Taiwan at the annual week-long summit of the WHO, and instruct the US delegation to Geneva to implement such a plan.
The Taiwanese government has to tackle the issue of regaining WHA observer status at the highest level. How?
The association has said for more than a decade that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs needs to create a “coalition of the willing” — a group of nations willing to stand up against China. Taiwan has to start organizing such a coalition and not wait for the US to do it.
The ministry needs to instruct each Taiwanese representative in the 34 nations that make up the WHO executive board to tell their counterparts in their host countries that Taiwan is building a coalition of nations to support its bid for an observer status at the WHA.
When the executive board meeting takes place next month, Taiwan’s diplomatic allies Swaziland and/or the Dominican Republic, both of which are on the board, unlike China, could introduce a resolution calling for Taiwan’s observer status in the WHA.
If Taiwan’s representatives have been effective and have been able to convince their counterparts to support Taiwan’s bid for an observer status in the WHA, then Taiwan would have passed the first hurdle to regaining observer status in the assembly.
After the board meeting, China will get involved and that will open up a whole new can of worms.
Peter Chen is president of the Washington-based Formosan Association for Public Affairs.
US President Donald Trump has gotten off to a head-spinning start in his foreign policy. He has pressured Denmark to cede Greenland to the United States, threatened to take over the Panama Canal, urged Canada to become the 51st US state, unilaterally renamed the Gulf of Mexico to “the Gulf of America” and announced plans for the United States to annex and administer Gaza. He has imposed and then suspended 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico for their roles in the flow of fentanyl into the United States, while at the same time increasing tariffs on China by 10
Trying to force a partnership between Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) and Intel Corp would be a wildly complex ordeal. Already, the reported request from the Trump administration for TSMC to take a controlling stake in Intel’s US factories is facing valid questions about feasibility from all sides. Washington would likely not support a foreign company operating Intel’s domestic factories, Reuters reported — just look at how that is going over in the steel sector. Meanwhile, many in Taiwan are concerned about the company being forced to transfer its bleeding-edge tech capabilities and give up its strategic advantage. This is especially
US President Donald Trump last week announced plans to impose reciprocal tariffs on eight countries. As Taiwan, a key hub for semiconductor manufacturing, is among them, the policy would significantly affect the country. In response, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) dispatched two officials to the US for negotiations, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC) board of directors convened its first-ever meeting in the US. Those developments highlight how the US’ unstable trade policies are posing a growing threat to Taiwan. Can the US truly gain an advantage in chip manufacturing by reversing trade liberalization? Is it realistic to
Last week, 24 Republican representatives in the US Congress proposed a resolution calling for US President Donald Trump’s administration to abandon the US’ “one China” policy, calling it outdated, counterproductive and not reflective of reality, and to restore official diplomatic relations with Taiwan, enter bilateral free-trade agreement negotiations and support its entry into international organizations. That is an exciting and inspiring development. To help the US government and other nations further understand that Taiwan is not a part of China, that those “one China” policies are contrary to the fact that the two countries across the Taiwan Strait are independent and
RSS