Ever since the election of President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in 2016, the WHO, under pressure from Beijing, has prohibited Taiwanese health officials from attending information-sharing meetings and forums held by the global health organization.
Amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, Beijing again was able to block participation by Taiwanese authorities at the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO’s decisionmaking body, in May. Beijing considers the de facto independent nation of Taiwan part of its territory, although the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never ruled it.
If Taipei had little information to offer WHO members, its lack of participation might not have mattered. However, with fewer than 500 confirmed cases and only seven deaths among a population of about 24 million, Taiwan has been one of the few success stories for containing COVID-19.
Despite being barred from the WHA, Taipei was able to share its experience on a bilateral, but more cumbersome basis, with several nations — including the US, with which it has held more than 30 videoconferences.
Beijing’s bullying led to calls by key lawmakers and representatives from Australia, Japan, the UK, the EU and the US for Taiwan to freely access WHO meetings and forums in order for Taipei to more easily share its disease prevention practices with the world.
No doubt much of this advice was shared when US Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar and his delegation visited Taipei for four days last week.
The arrival of Azar marked the first US Cabinet-level official visit to Taiwan since 2014 and the highest-level visit since the nations severed diplomatic relations in 1979.
However, given the timing of the trip, it appears the visit was more about showing solidarity with Taiwan than learning from the “Taiwan model,” which has been widely shared via videoconferences since January.
Moreover, the face-to-face visit was intended to indicate Washington’s willingness to retaliate for Beijing’s role in blocking Taiwan’s participation in the May WHA meeting and to project a strong anti-China stance ahead of the US presidential election in November.
Nonetheless, the delegation’s visit does offer the opportunity to gather important information and establish meaningful ties with Taiwanese health authorities, and to show official support for Taiwan through the signing of a memorandum of understanding to strengthen cooperation and collaboration on health-related issues.
The visit also drew speculation from news outlets, including Japan’s Sankei Shimbun, on whether the US and Taiwan were in talks to form an alternative international health organization following Washington’s pullout of the WHO earlier this year.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the report, calling it “mere conjecture,” while Azar said talks would occur after the US officially withdraws from the WHO in July next year.
The speculation over an alternative international health organization comes at a time when many Americans have lost faith in the WHO. Only 20 percent say they have “a great deal” of trust in the organization, with 40 percent claiming “not at all” or “not too much” trust in COVID-19 outbreak information coming from the WHO.
Some might argue there is no need for an additional bureaucracy, as information on the COVID-19 spread through nimbler organizations than the WHO, including social media.
Taiwanese health experts had heard from their colleagues in China as early as December last year that doctors were getting ill from their patients, and on Dec. 31 forwarded their concerns of human-to-human transmission to the WHO’s International Health Regulations network exchange and Chinese health authorities.
US authorities might also have had a warning from the National Center for Medical Intelligence, a branch of the Defense Intelligence Agency, which reportedly warned the agency, the joint chiefs of staff and the White House in November last year, based on its analysis of wire and computer intercepts, along with satellite images.
While information flows such as the above should be encouraged, a coordinated multilateral platform could be more effective, by gathering information centrally, verifying the information and coordinating the dissemination of valid information to all countries.
Leading members of this platform could include those countries that have been at the forefront of successfully halting the spread of COVID-19 (eg, Canada, Germany, Iceland, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan).
Any multilateral efforts to create a new platform for the exchange of disease prevention and displace the WHO as the world’s leading international health agency will no doubt be challenging and sure to be opposed by Beijing, which will use the full force of its political and economic influence to block its development.
However, the barring of Taiwan from the WHA in May by Beijing has shown that the PRC holds undue influence over the WHO, and in lieu of any immediate meaningful reform, an alternative organization is needed now — where valuable disease prevention information can flow freely, away from political influence.
Gary Sands is a senior analyst at Wikistrat, a crowdsourced consultancy, and a former diplomat with the US Overseas Private Investment Corp. He is now based in Taipei.
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