US and Taiwanese officials have redoubled efforts to secure Taipei’s participation in the World Health Assembly and other multilateral bodies, following an unsuccessful bid to join the UN forum earlier this year.
Without identifying which officials are taking part or what the efforts entail, the US State Department on Wednesday said that the meeting – organised by the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto US embassy on the self-ruled island, and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington – included representatives from the State Department and Taiwan’s foreign ministry.
“This discussion focused on near-term opportunities to support Taiwan’s expanded participation in the World Health Assembly (WHA) and other global public health bodies, the International Civil Aviation Organisation, as well as Taiwan’s meaningful participation in non-UN international, regional and multilateral organisations,” it said.
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The announcement was nearly identical to one issued weeks before this year’s WHA, the annual conference in Geneva at which World Health Organization (WHO) policies are hammered out. The conference, held this year in May, invites representatives of all 194 UN member countries to attend.
The mainland Chinese government, voicing opposition along with Pakistan, blocked Taiwan’s participation, as it has done each year since 2017, when tensions across the Taiwan Strait began mounting. Beijing replaced Taipei as a permanent UN member in 1971, as the US and other Western countries began talks aimed at switching their diplomatic recognition to mainland China.
Lacking UN membership, Taiwan was nonetheless granted observer status at the WHA from 2009 to 2016, when relations were warmer owing to more stable relations between Beijing and the Kuomintang Party (KMT), then the party in power in Taipei.
Since the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) took power in 2016, though, Beijing has enforced its one-China policy, which regards Taiwan as a breakaway territory with no right to join international bodies.
That stance has collided with calls led by the United States for Taiwanese representation at the WHA, noting that the island fared better than most populations in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic, and managed a more relaxed response, particularly in comparison to the mainland, when the more contagious Omicron variant hit.
Taiwan unlikely to be observer at WHA ‘no matter how hard US tries’
Beijing’s pandemic approach was characterised by lengthy lockdowns, strict quarantine and mass testings to stamp out the spread of the virus – measures that were withdrawn abruptly a year ago, which led to an overwhelming surge in cases.
Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said that support for Taiwan as a WHA observer “came to a head” – particularly among developed countries like the US and Britain, which endured numerous spikes in Covid-19 mortality – owing to the island’s success in managing the contagion.
Knowing that China has enough support within the UN to block any invitation by WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to Taiwanese authorities, Gupta said, the State Department is engaging in more of an effort to raise international attention to their cause.
“The US has no illusion that it can get what it wants here,” he explained. “It knows it’s going to fail, but [the State Department] sees a little momentum in trying to at least get the Western world behind it. And that itself was sufficient in its view.”
“It expects to succeed in creating a larger group of countries which would champion this observership request,” Gupta added.
The Marshall Islands, Belize, Nauru and Eswatini – four of the 13 UN countries that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taipei – declared their support along with the US in this year’s failed effort to revive the observer status. In addition, Britain, France, Australia and several other countries aligned with Washington supported Taiwan on the vote.
Following Taipei’s defeat, Chen Xu, Beijing’s representative to the UN’s Geneva headquarters, accused the DPP of staging “a political ploy to engage in ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist activities by hyping up its participation in the WHA”.
Chen said in a statement that Taiwan’s participation in WHO activities must be handled under the one-China principle.
“The DPP authorities refuse to recognise that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one China, unilaterally abandoning the political foundation for the Taiwan region to participate in the WHA,” Chen said.
Washington’s engagement with Taipei has increased in recent years as ties with Beijing have also soured owing to concerns throughout the US government that the Chinese government intends to retake Taiwan militarily.
Accusations that Beijing has used its trade and investment ties with the US to boost its military capabilities and create a threatening presence throughout the Western Pacific have added to the animosity.
Agreements this year under the US-Taiwan Initiative on 21st Century Trade, which was launched by the Biden administration in 2022, include allowances for electronic documentation and payments, measures intended to accelerate trade between the two markets.
The administration’s effort to bring Taipei into the WHA and other international forums align with another bill signed into law last year by US President Joe Biden, which directs “the Secretary of State to develop a strategy to regain observer status for Taiwan in the World Health Organization (WHO), and for other purposes”.
The bill passed with unanimous consent in the Senate in 2021 and was approved 425-0 by the House of Representatives.
More from South China Morning Post:
- Top US trade envoy says Taiwan won’t get a free trade deal with new market access or reduced tariffs
- Mainland China, Taiwan farming cooperation could be fruitful – despite recent sour grapes
- Beijing slams Taiwan’s DPP over cross-strait ‘chaos’, warns of rising risk of war if 1992 consensus not heeded
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