Support for Taiwan's participation in WHO comes to a head

Audio 06:20

By: Adrien Simorre Follow

Officially, Joseph Wu is Minister of Foreign Affairs for only fifteen countries in the world. The majority of the international community, including France, does not recognize the existence of Taiwan in the name of the principle of one China, according to which Taiwan is a Chinese province. At Beijing's request, Taiwan thus lost its status as an observer member of the World Health Organization (WHO) after the victory of the Democratic-Progressive Party in 2016, which rejected Beijing's claims.

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Despite this isolation, the young Taiwanese democracy and its 23 million inhabitants have shown tremendous efficiency in the face of the Covid-19. In response, many voices were raised calling for Taiwan's participation in WHO, whose annual meeting will be held from May 17 to 21. Between two meetings, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, Joseph Wu, granted an interview to RFI, microphone in hand and safety distances respected.

RFI: The Director-General of WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, an Ethiopian national, recently accused Taiwan of being behind racist attacks targeting him personally. What is your position on such accusations ?

Joseph Wu: We did indeed hear Dr. Tedros unabashedly accuse Taiwan of being racist and of having initiated racial slurs against him. We are sorry that such attacks have taken place. But I can assure you that this is not the work of the Taiwanese government and that we have never encouraged any Taiwanese to do so.

Taiwan has long been excluded from the international community and we understand better than anyone the feeling that discrimination results. Since its democratization, Taiwan has always condemned all forms of discrimination, and our commitment in this matter is stronger than any other country, precisely because of our own exclusion from the international community.

These accusations come after several Taiwanese officials have criticized the way WHO has handled this crisis. Do you think that China's influence in WHO has led to a delay in the global response to the epidemic ?

The first thing is that Taiwan is indeed one of those who spoke to raise the possibility that some decisions made by WHO may have been mistakes. This is the case, for example, when the WHO said, even though there was a very serious epidemic in China, that international trade or international tourism should continue.

Taiwan took a stand, but we were not alone. Critics of WHO's handling of the crisis are massive internationally, and Taiwan's critics are the same as those made by other countries.

The second thing is what we have seen for ourselves. Take for example the email we sent to WHO late last year to alert people of the risk of human-to-human transmission around the city of Wuhan. This email went unanswered. It is not the right method to adopt if you want to act transparently around this contagious disease.

And the consequence is that the international community has suffered enormously, not only China, but also Europe, the United States and today Africa. For this reason, we believe that WHO could have done more to better understand the origin and development of the epidemic, and to allow all countries in the world to be better prepared for the pandemic.

For its part, Taiwan reacted very quickly at the first signs of the epidemic. What explains this early reaction ?

In 2003, Taiwan was hit hard by the SARS epidemic, with thousands of people infected and a significant number of deaths. It was a difficult lesson for us, and we knew we had to be prepared for a new epidemic risk.

On December 31, the day we sent a notification to the WHO and emails to the Chinese authorities, we began to inspect all flights arriving from Wuhan to identify passengers with symptoms of atypical pneumonia.

In January, while stories about a communicable disease in Wuhan continued to be told to us, we sent our own experts to conduct an on-site investigation. Even if they were not able to have all the information necessary for their investigation, they understood that something was wrong.

When they returned to Taiwan, we started to prepare for a possible epidemic. Our epidemic command center has been activated to allow us to take an intergovernmental approach to the epidemic.

In mid-January, just after confirmation of the first Covid-19 case in Taiwan, we suspended all flights from Wuhan and implemented a system to prevent travelers from areas hard hit by the epidemic could enter Taiwan. We have also decided to suspend the export of surgical masks and have started massive local production to ensure that every citizen can be protected.

Finally, we have put in place a mechanism to ensure that we can find all the contact points for confirmed cases. Taxi drivers were used to safely transport some of these people to the quarantine centers, and the local authorities took care of the people in quarantine.

Thanks to this strategy, the epidemic now seems to be under control in Taiwan. However, we will not be safe until the international community is too. It is for this reason that we wish to share our experience with the international community.

In light of this effective response, do you think the global situation could have been different if Taiwan were a member of the WHO ?

It is very difficult to imagine what could have happened if Taiwan were a member, or even just an observer member, of WHO. First of all, I think that we should have the right to receive all the necessary information from WHO when we need it. However, for now, it is practically impossible for Taiwan to have access to information in real time from the WHO.

The other thing is that the information Taiwan wants to share with the international community is not relayed. Our information is simply sent to the International Health Regulations (IHR) platform, but we don't know what happens next!

Finally, we therefore believe that it is our duty to help the countries that need Taiwan's assistance, in particular because we have higher health standards than many other countries in the region. The best mechanism would be through WHO to assist these countries, but this is impossible under the current circumstances.

I can give you a concrete example: last year, we realized that the fight against the Ebola virus was very important, and we proposed to make a donation to the WHO to support this cause. And yet, towards the end of the process, WHO rejected our proposal.

This type of situation shows that Taiwan needs to participate more directly in WHO, whether as a full member or as an observer member. This would certainly be of benefit to WHO.

The WHO World Health Assembly will take place from May 17 to 21. Do you expect real progress on the issue of Taiwan's participation ?

There are two levels of observation. On the one hand, there is the attitude of the WHO, and in particular of its Director-General, Dr Tedros. Based on her feedback and comments, we see no change in WHO's position regarding Taiwan's participation. We imagine that China continues to exert pressure not to integrate Taiwan. Under these conditions, the possibility that Taiwan could be granted observer member status is therefore reduced, if not non-existent.

The second dimension is the question of international support. There is certainly a country that refuses our participation, but there are many more who support it, particularly among the countries with which we share common values. Recently, the governments of the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Japan have come out very strongly to support our participation in WHO.

We also discreetly hear European countries say that they will support Taiwan's participation in the WHO. I cannot tell you what is being said behind the scenes, but I can assure you that there are an increasing number of European countries who are ready to write to WHO asking it to integrate Taiwan. Even in Latin America, where we have only one diplomatic ally, several countries are ready to do so.

By adding up all these voices, it can be said that support for Taiwan's participation as an observer member is reaching its peak today. We now have a moral basis to ask WHO to grant us observer status.

The Trump administration recently announced the withdrawal of U.S. financial participation in the WHO. Do you still believe in the importance and the capacity of the institution to organize international health cooperation ?

WHO remains the only international organization dealing with international health issues. Admittedly, many people deplore that WHO is dominated by a single actor, and believe that WHO should be reformed to function more effectively. This is a view that we share, and we believe that the first reform that WHO should carry out is to allow the participation of Taiwan.

Then, each country has its own method of trying to think about how to encourage or push the WHO to seriously reform, so I will not comment on this decision by President Trump. What I see is an international effort to try to understand, investigate the source of the Covid-19 and think about a common way to fight the epidemic. All of these efforts are valuable, and the most important thing for Taiwan is to be able to participate in this effort.

China seems to be engaged in a strategy to promote the effectiveness of its authoritarian model in managing the epidemic. Taiwanese democracy, however, acts as an undeniable counter-example. Has your democratic system helped you to contain the epidemic?

Since you are in Taiwan, you must have attended the press conferences at our command center. You know that the way in which these conferences take place is based on total transparency! You can ask any question and the director of the command center will continue to answer your questions until you have the slightest doubt. This total transparency can only exist in a democratic system. It allows a very strong confidence pact between the government and the population.

On the other side, there is the system of Communist China which is very different, with an authoritarian system which is not able, institutionally, to be transparent, to be honest about the situation, because its objective is the stability of the regime and the consolidation of its power. It is a very different relationship to power.

Since the situation has improved in China, China has effectively started to provide relief supplies, presenting this in the form of donations and trying to ask recipient countries to praise the Chinese model. But many realized that these donations were actually sales, at prices sometimes higher than market prices, and some found that some of the equipment sent was defective. So I think that when China tries to sell its model to the international community and tries to demonstrate its superiority, for example, to the Taiwanese model, the international community rejects it.

And I am sure that countries sharing the same values ​​as us, if they look at the Taiwanese experience, will realize that democratic methods are much better for managing the epidemic than an authoritarian approach.

In recent communications, China suggests that Taiwan may be tempted to take advantage of the epidemic to move towards the declaration of its independence. Can you clarify your position on the subject ?

At a time when the pandemic is hitting Taiwan like the rest of the world, the only thing we care about is being able to manage this situation and help the rest of the world as best we can.

If we take the example of the campaign to participate in WHO, we have run it every year since the 2000s, and this year we are doing nothing more than what we did before.

This year, there is a difference, that Taiwan has demonstrated its capacity to contain the epidemic, and for this reason, there is a stronger recognition of Taiwan's right to participate in WHO. But that has nothing to do with the fact that Taiwan would like to declare or seek independence.

No matter how much China maintains that Taiwan belongs to it, it is false, it does not represent reality. The reality is that Taiwan exists in itself, that China and Taiwan are different, and that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait are administered by two separate governments.

So we have to be very careful with what China tries to make certain countries swallow, or even with what it forces them to say publicly, especially when it wants to make people believe that Taiwan belongs to China.

However, I have the feeling that more and more countries understand the real situation of Taiwan, namely that we are not part of China. And that what we want is to maintain the status quo so that relations between the two sides of the strait can continue to be peaceful and stable.

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