Taiwan’s access to World Health Organization information about the coronavirus is being delayed amid political disputes with the Chinese communist government, as the outbreak spreads.
Taiwan has not been invited to observe World Health Organization meetings since 2017, when China blocked it from membership. The government in Taipei is pressing for global recognition, as three coronavirus cases have been confirmed in Taiwan.
“If Taiwan is excluded and unable to conduct real-time cooperation and exchanges on the platform, it weakens the overall protection effort, leaving a huge loophole in global epidemic prevention,” an official at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, Taiwan’s de facto embassy, told the Washington Examiner.
“As soon as the borderless viruses break through from the protection net, it not only poses a huge threat to the health of more than 23 million residents in Taiwan, but also a serious problem and challenge to global security,” the TECRO official said.
More than 130 suspected coronavirus cases have been reported in Taiwan this week, including 70 on Thursday alone, prompting local authorities to expand “its requirements for reporting suspected cases.” Taiwanese officials were not invited to an emergency meeting of the WHO this week, but the organization’s top emergency health official maintained that Taipei is getting the necessary information — while implicitly affirming that Taiwan is part of China.
“I believe there have been joint missions and joint approaches to the response, so I would characterize, from our perspective, that there is technical cooperation going on between provinces in China and between WHO and any of those entities that seek our assistance,” Michael Ryan, WHO’s executive director for health emergencies, told reporters in Geneva on Thursday.
The United States does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country due to Jimmy Carter’s 1979 decision to establish a diplomatic relationship with the communist government in Beijing. U.S. officials have maintained friendly unofficial ties with Taipei, selling advanced weaponry to the island’s armed forces and pledging to defend Taiwan from a hostile invasion.
“We would encourage further incorporation of Taiwan in the WHO instead of trying to exclude them,” a senior State Department official told reporters earlier this week. “This is an important time, as you are seeing the corona cases are popping up in Taiwan, as you’d expect because of the proximity and the movement between the two.”
The dispute is one theater in the global dispute over Taiwan’s place on the world stage, as the mainland Chinese regime claims sovereignty over Taiwan and pressures international bodies not to treat Taiwan as a separate nation. Taipei does not recognize Beijing’s claims to sovereignty, as the island is the last holdout of the government overthrown during the Chinese communist revolution in 1949.
“No one cares more about the health and well-being of our compatriots in Taiwan than China’s central government does,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said this week. “As we repeatedly stressed, Taiwan’s participation in international organization activities must be arranged in a fair and reasonable manner following the ‘One China’ principle after cross-strait consultations.”
Taiwan’s medical officials have developed a suite of tactics for accelerating the island’s independent access to WHO information.
“We have some friends in nongovernmental organizations, and in their capacity as members in those groups, they can get into the assembly as observers,” Brian Chang, deputy secretary general of Taiwan’s Medical Association, said earlier this year. “Basically, even though we are missing from the meeting floor, in reality, we can continuously get the information we need about ongoing matters.”
That’s not an adequate substitute in the current crisis, according to Taiwanese officials. “In the global public health systems, countries have to work together to establish a unified defense line against epidemics,” the TECRO official said.
