2022: Taiwan and its continued push for recognition

27 January 2022

In 2021, Taiwan’s international profile gained unprecedented levels of attention and support in all corners of the world. Can this trend continue to grow in 2022?

Here, 9DASHLINE invites a select group of experts to explore how Taiwan may circumvent its diplomatic isolation and be included as a reliable partner in international efforts seeking a transition towards a greener, healthier and more resilient world.

PUSH THE LINE WITH INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Lev Nachman, Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University

We already see this trend continuing with Slovenia the latest European country to show new levels of support for Taiwan at an international level. This move, along with the various other countries ranging from Japan to Lithuania, expressing new levels of solidarity with Taiwan, has helped garner international attention in ways not seen in years.

There are lines that Taiwan can push with the support of the international community. Lobbying states for meaningful participation in the UN or other international organisations would be a valuable use of this newfound international attention. Especially with Taiwan’s proven track record of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has never been a more important time for Taiwan to finally have access to these international organisations, not just for its own benefit but so that Taiwan can help other states in the world needing support and access to vaccines.

The challenge, however, for both Taiwan and its newfound allies, is how to navigate these new diplomatic waters in a way that does not disproportionately increase the likelihood of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Whatever ways states want to support Taiwan they should make sure that the safety of Taiwanese people is still the priority. Symbolic gestures that aggravate China more than help Taiwan, while perhaps empowering to some Taiwanese people, do little to substantively help Taiwan but do add to tension within the Taiwan Strait.

DELIVER ON PROMISES

Kuan-Ting Chen, CEO — Taiwan NextGen Foundation

Despite its precarious geopolitical status, Taiwan has been able to contrive an idiosyncratic, people-centric model for productive engagement with its partners around the world. This people-centric drive in the nation’s foreign policy has manifested itself on an unprecedented scale following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which gave rise to the #TaiwanCanHelp public health campaign. From Estonia to Eswatini, and from Guatemala to Guam, Taiwan provided its partners with sorely needed personal protective equipment and best practices for curbing the transmission of the virus.

This, in turn, allowed Taiwan to amplify its voice in the international arena, and garner broad-ranging, multi-stakeholder support for its quest for unobstructed engagement with the global community. It is important to bear in mind, however, that Taiwan did not assume the role of humanitarian-in-chief only in 2020. The nation has a long history of providing medical relief internationally. It counts the eradication of malaria in São Tomé and Príncipe among its most demonstrative achievements, for instance. This is all to say that President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration can build upon a solid foundation as it seeks to expand Taiwan’s global footprint in 2022.

Last year marked the fifth anniversary of the New Southbound Policy (NSP), Taiwan’s flagship foreign policy initiative. During the 2021 Yushan Forum, it was announced that this year will see the launch of the NSP 2.0. The revised version of the policy will focus on expanding regional healthcare links and optimising resource integration, coordination mechanisms, and information platforms, contributing to a healthier and more resilient Indo-Pacific. Under the One Country, One Centre initiative of Taiwan’s Ministry of Health and Welfare, eight Taiwanese hospitals are working in seven NSP target nations, providing training, promoting supply chains and building disease-prevention networks.

It is thus promising to witness the government’s resolve in expanding this framework for global engagement which simultaneously targets different stakeholders, enhancing the sustainability of relations forged by Taiwan. As Taiwan’s technological prowess has been an important source of the nation’s soft power, the expansion of medical cooperation under NSP 2.0 would be particularly beneficial if it included a focus on promotion and implementation of eHealth solutions or the use of information and communication technologies for public health.

This year also offers an opportunity for Taiwan to deliver on the promises it has made during 2021, an extraordinarily busy year in Taiwan-EU relations. In particular, the dedicated scholarships for cultivating the next generation of semiconductor specialists in Central and Eastern Europe merit further attention. Positioning capacity building as the core of Taiwan’s strategy of economic and investment outreach for the region sends an important message to European partners: Taiwan cares about the long-term sustainability of relations rather than merely short-term profit.

This scholarship program also demonstrates that elites in Taipei understand the importance of complementarity in pursuing deeper ties with Europe, as the timely scheme aligns well with the objectives of the European Chips Act. Much like public health, named the priority under NSP 2.0, education is the foundation for economic growth and human development. Consequently, Taiwan’s conscious decision to pair investment cooperation with educational initiatives is a strong sign of the nation’s commitment to strengthening individual, community, and systemic resilience among its partners. Taiwan’s people-centric outreach to Europe requires developing frameworks distinct from those deployed in Southeast Asia, as the Taiwanese diaspora in Europe is not as large as in most NSP target countries. This is why the nation’s activities in Central and Eastern Europe are slated to serve as an important litmus test for the feasibility of Taiwan’s people-centric approach in regions where its footprint has so far been limited.

DIVERSIFY AND INVEST IN PARTNERSHIPS

Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, Head of Associates Network at 9DASHLINE

2021 was a remarkable year for Taiwan. Its leadership, in cooperation with society, set an example to the rest of the world of how to withstand authoritarian pressure and economic coercion, and prosper as a democracy in the middle of a global health crisis. Transparency, trust, and technology — the core of the ‘Taiwan Model’ — enabled Taipei to be a genuine partner, to strengthen its international partnerships and establish new ones, notwithstanding its diplomatic isolation. In 2021, Taiwan was successful at home, and generous and indispensable abroad. Its economy has been growing at the fastest pace in a decade, and its democracy has remained resilient. It successfully withstood political meddling and disinformation by the People’s Republic of China, keeping calm in the face of the PRC’s warplane incursions into its air defence zone.

In 2022, Taiwan must capitalise on this momentum and ensure it remains indispensable to its partners in the Indo-Pacific and beyond. Dominating the production of semiconductors that power almost all advanced civilian and military technologies, Taiwan will continue playing a critical role in fueling the global economy, while living under the threat of invasion by authoritarian China. Taiwan must continue to diversify and invest more in its partnerships and cooperation on all levels: people-to-people, university-to-university, city-to-city. Taiwan’s only path to prosperity and dignity is rooted in democracy. Taiwan can and must pursue this path by working closely with like-minded democracies and delivering solutions together in green technology, countering disinformation, and pandemic preparedness. In 2022, the world still has much to learn from Taiwan.

SUSTAIN THE MOMENTUM

J. Michael Cole, Senior Non-Resident Fellow with the Global Taiwan Institute (US), Macdonald-Laurier Institute (Canada), and the Taiwan Studies Programme at the University of Nottingham (UK)

The gains made by Taiwan throughout 2021 with regards to its international space were a combination of factors: Taipei’s creative policymaking and willingness to engage international partners in areas that were not traditionally the focus of its foreign policy, and a geopolitical context that has become more sceptical of Beijing and, consequently, more receptive to deepening ties with Taiwan. Taiwan’s ability to sustain that momentum in 2022 will be contingent on whether it can institutionalise its efforts, and on how Beijing adapts to what it regards as ‘net losses’ in its zero-sum contest for international space. Already, there are signs the Chinese regime may be recognising that there are areas where its traditional coercive approach to smaller states, which had hitherto ensured they followed Beijing’s preferred policies, is no longer succeeding. In Lithuania and the Czech Republic, for example, this may be attributed to the limited exposure of those countries to the Chinese economy.

Beijing may now be learning to tailor its punitive strategy by identifying the systemic weaknesses in those countries’ economies and targeting areas of greater dependence, such as components and supply chains, by pressuring other firms in other countries to join in what is tantamount to a boycott. A successful response to that new challenge, and key for Taiwan’s successes in enlarging its diplomatic field, will depend on the willingness of larger economies, as well as blocs such as the EU, to act in a unified fashion and thereby close off opportunities for China to punish those states. This isn’t a battle that Taiwan, along with the smaller democracies it now engages, can fight alone.

DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform. Image credit: Flickr/郭泰宏.