After US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan earlier this month, opposition Indian Member of Parliament Manish Tewari suggested that the speaker of the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament) lead a similar delegation to Taipei.
The restoration of parliamentary delegation visits would be timely and essential to bring the India-Taiwan relationship to greater heights. After all, in 2018, the Indian Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs was instrumental in reminding the Ministry of External Affairs that “India is overly cautious on Taiwan, but China does not exhibit similar sensitivities on Arunachal Pradesh or Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”
Parliamentary exchanges between India and Taiwan are not a new phenomenon; it is just that the COVID-19 pandemic and other factors put a halt to such exchanges. The last parliamentary exchange took place in 2017, when an all-women delegation visited India under the aegis of the India-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association formed in 2016. China responded by threatening India that it was “playing with fire” and saying it should not engage with Taiwan. Although unrelated, this was followed by the Doklam stand-off and India’s attention was diverted to the never-ending tensions with China.
Beijing’s aggression and its shared concerns with Australia, Japan and the US led New Delhi to partake in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad). There is no doubt that Chinese aggression and the resultant deterioration in its relations with the Quad countries were major contributory factors in the revival of this grouping.
However, sensing the gravity of the situation, China extended an olive branch and suggested informal summits with India’s leaders. Nevertheless, China’s pretentious gesture of friendship could not survive amid the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Beijing initiated another incursion in the Galwan Valley, which quickly turned into a stand-off that claimed the lives of 20 Indian soldiers and an undisclosed number of Chinese soldiers.
Indians’ rapidly changing perception of China and frequent border clashes have reaffirmed New Delhi’s resolve to stand up to Beijing in their seven-decade-old border dispute. India has been occupied with managing tensions with China while keeping its core values and sovereignty in sight. It is under no obligation to pay attention to China’s territorial tantrums when the former has repeatedly violated India’s territorial sovereignty and attempted to change the narrative of media and politicians.
The Chinese embassy in India went a step further in its bullying tactics and sent a rude letter to some Indian MPs when they met with Tibetan parliament-in-exile speaker Khenpo Sonam Tenphe. India’s Ministry of External Affairs gave a stern response, saying: “The Chinese side should note that India is a vibrant democracy and Hon’ble MPs, as representatives of the people, undertake activities as per their views and beliefs.”
Chinese aggression and India’s resolve to safeguard its sovereignty resonate with Taiwan. At the same time, a growing awareness and warmth toward Taiwan among Indian civil society and media have led to growing multilayered exchanges between the two countries. One of the positive outcomes was the revival of the India-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Forum in 2020.
That year witnessed new highs in the relationship. The resumption of parliamentary exchanges between the two nations would contribute to the growing momentum in the relations. Such exchanges have the potential to fill the void left by the lack of formal diplomatic exchanges. Parliamentary exchanges do not impinge on the existing framework of India-Taiwan relations; on the contrary, parliamentary diplomacy could be complementary to the efforts of the representative offices, the ministries of commerce and the state governments.
As the third-largest Asian economy, India can leverage Taiwan technological advancements, while offering it one of the biggest markets for access in return. India is already courting Taiwanese semiconductor firms, especially Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. While economic and technological exchanges add an important dimension to the relationship, parliamentarians could help advance India’s interests in a range of critical sectors.
With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday announcing his new mission — “Viksit Bharat” — to make India a developed nation by 2047, New Delhi cannot let Beijing decide the course of its engagement with Taipei. In this context, it is important to normalize parliamentary exchanges between India and Taiwan. Parliamentarian visits are legislative in nature, not political. Such visits do not signal a policy change, but complement deeper agenda setting in the policymaking arena.
Indian MPs should visit Taiwan not because the West is doing it, but because it is in the nation’s interests and regular exchanges are a healthy practice of exchanges between the two democracies. India should set the precedent here, and make parliamentary diplomacy an important component of its relations with Taiwan.
Sana Hashmi is post-doctoral fellow at the Taiwan-Asia Exchange Foundation.
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
Prior to marrying a Taiwanese and moving to Taiwan, a Chinese woman, surnamed Zhang (張), used her elder sister’s identity to deceive Chinese officials and obtain a resident identity card in China. After marrying a Taiwanese, surnamed Chen (陳) and applying to move to Taiwan, Zhang continued to impersonate her sister to obtain a Republic of China ID card. She used the false identity in Taiwan for 18 years. However, a judge ruled that her case does not constitute forgery and acquitted her. Does this mean that — as long as a sibling agrees — people can impersonate others to alter, forge
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS