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.
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
I have heard people equate the government’s stance on resisting forced unification with China or the conditional reinstatement of the military court system with the rise of the Nazis before World War II. The comparison is absurd. There is no meaningful parallel between the government and Nazi Germany, nor does such a mindset exist within the general public in Taiwan. It is important to remember that the German public bore some responsibility for the horrors of the Holocaust. Post-World War II Germany’s transitional justice efforts were rooted in a national reckoning and introspection. Many Jews were sent to concentration camps not
RSS