After Panama last year, China has poached another of Taiwan’s diplomatic allies, with the Dominican Republic on Monday announcing it was severing ties with Taipei and switching recognition to Beijing.
The question now is: How is purchasing diplomatic recognition in a losing battle of “checkbook diplomacy” with China congruent with the government’s goal to project Taiwan on the world stage as a mature and responsible democracy and a trusted international partner?
Redirecting these vast sums of money into large-scale humanitarian aid programs would not only be a more ethically sound foreign policy, but also a far more effective way to project Taiwan’s voice abroad.
Last month’s claim of a chemical weapons attack in Syria, replete with horrific reports of children foaming at the mouth, was a stark reminder of the horrendous human suffering that afflicts so many areas of the globe.
As the world’s 15th-largest economy and Asia’s seventh-largest, Taiwan should be doing more to provide emergency humanitarian aid in disaster zones.
According to the latest available data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Taiwan in 2016 spent only 0.06 percent of GDP on international aid, less than Slovakia, Romania and even Malta, and well below the UN’s target of 0.7 percent.
There is of course a strong moral imperative to provide overseas aid — humanitarian assistance should be the primary goal, but the government should not be afraid to also advance the diplomatic argument.
Taiwan donated the most aid of any nation after a major earthquake and tsunami struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011. It was a clear demonstration of the power of well-targeted Taiwanese aid, the benefits of which are still being felt to this day.
Since then, the Taiwan-Japan relationship has been elevated, with the renaming last year of Japan’s Taipei representative office to include “Taiwan” in its name.
Japanese tourism to Taiwan has also seen a significant boost.
It would be churlish not to acknowledge that Taiwanese humanitarian aid has come a long way, and is now more transparent and better directed than ever. Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund is active on several continents, including Africa, providing drought relief in Kenya, healthcare training in Nigeria and agricultural assistance in South Sudan.
However, at a time when Taiwan is struggling to make its voice heard on the international stage, why is the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not engaging more proactively with the wider world, beyond Southeast Asia, with generous, high-profile humanitarian aid programs?
With Taiwan effectively frozen out of the international community by China, it can sometimes feel as if the ministry’s officials have too little to do.
Let us put the civil servants to work. After all, Taiwan does not need to be a member of any international organization to provide aid.
If Beijing were to kick up a fuss over direct state-to-state aid, Taiwan could channel its official aid informally, through non-governmental organizations. In such an event, the ministry would need to follow up with a high-profile advertising campaign to ensure the aid is clearly attributed to Taiwan.
If Taiwan is serious about becoming an accepted member of the international community, officials need to come up with a more creative — and ethical — foreign policy.
The government should call time on outdated “checkbook diplomacy,” take a leaf out of Sweden’s book and become the “humanitarian superpower” of the East.
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) exercises, the largest naval exercise in the region, are aimed at deepening international collaboration and interaction while strengthening tactical capabilities and flexibility in tackling maritime crises. China was invited to participate in RIMPAC in 2014 and 2016, but it was excluded this year. The underlying reason is that Beijing’s ambitions of regional expansion and challenging the international order have raised global concern. The world has made clear its suspicions of China, and its exclusion from RIMPAC this year will bring about a sea change in years to come. The purpose of excluding China is primarily
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the