Democratic resilience – Why Taiwan and Europe must be more ambitious in 2024
Democratic resilience — Why Taiwan and Europe must be more ambitious in 2024
WRITTEN BY DR ZSUZSA ANNA FERENCZY
18 December 2023
2023 was a good year for EU-Taiwan relations: a more assertive and aggressive China has pushed Europe and Taiwan closer. Taiwan’s image as a reliable partner for Europe has been consolidated, and a Taiwan-friendly European discourse has been established. Parliamentary diplomacy, the core avenue for bilateral cooperation, has helped to normalise relations to an extent that seems irreversible in the current context shaped by authoritarian threats — mainly from China and Russia — to which both remain vulnerable. Therefore, it makes sense for Europe and Taiwan to consider each other as partners.
As Taiwan gets ready for its presidential and parliamentary elections in January 2024 and the European Parliament for its own elections in June 2024, it is in the interest of both sides to increase efforts to contribute to each other’s economic and democratic resilience. It will serve them both to invest more in understanding each other’s complex relations with China. Failing to do so will jeopardise what has been achieved in EU-Taiwan relations; China and Russia will be the only beneficiaries of a slowdown.
In the context of abundant, and often coordinated, disinformation and information manipulation coming from Moscow and Beijing as well as their proxies, which is expected to strengthen ahead of the elections, clear and consistent communication on the importance of boosting EU-Taiwan cooperation will be key. Strengthening ongoing cooperation in democratic resilience must therefore remain a priority on the EU-Taiwan bilateral agenda. Will they be ambitious enough in 2024 to do more and better as partners?
Deepening Taiwan-EU ties
At the 4th EU Investment Forum in October, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen stated that to Europe, Taiwan is a reliable partner, with a proven track record, and that Taiwan looked forward to ensuring the resilience of supply chains through cooperation. In a meeting with a delegation from the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (AFET) in July this year, President Tsai expressed hope that Taiwan and the EU could continue deepening cooperation in supply chain resilience, investment, cybersecurity and technological innovation, and strengthen their partnership and unity between democracies.
Taiwan is a frontline democracy, which makes it an indispensable partner for Europe, one it should learn from as it braces for its own elections, with interference and information manipulation expected to increase, in particular from China and Russia.
The AFET visit to Taiwan followed that of the European Parliament’s Special Committee on Foreign Interference in all Democratic Processes (INGE) in 2021, and of the Committee on International Trade (INTA) in 2022. This is a clear sign that a tradition has been established — and Taiwan has reciprocated. In June, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu conducted a European tour with stops in Czechia, Poland, Belgium, and Italy. While in Prague, he met with Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Markéta Pekarová Adamová and Senate President Milos Vystrcil, both of whom have led efforts to strengthen ties with Taiwan. On his European visit, Wu also met Members of the European Parliament and legislators from Belgium, Luxembourg, and the UK.
These exchanges have secured greater visibility for Taiwan in the EU. Although Taiwan features more prominently in EU discussions on foreign and security policy, and increasingly in the context of talks on economic security, more work is needed to equip and empower European citizens to understand Taiwan’s geostrategic relevance — both in terms of trade and democracy.
As the growing number of parliamentary exchanges testify, this process has started and even amplified in light of Russia’s renewed aggression against Ukraine in February 2022. As this Lithuanian Member of the European Parliament said, defending Taiwan’s democracy “is just as important as defending Ukraine’s”. There is now a much clearer understanding, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe and the Baltic nations, that Taiwan is important for Europe’s effective geostrategic positioning.
Navigating identity politics
Questions remain as to how Europe can move forward — and closer — to Taiwan and translate rhetoric into substance, given the internal fragmentation that continues to shape the EU’s foreign and security policy vis-à-vis Taiwan and China. Taiwan faces challenges in navigating its own EU policy while balancing its special relationship with China.
For Europe, appreciating Taiwan’s complex relationship with China, and how this complexity will shape the outcome of the elections, should guide its efforts to better understand Taiwanese people — and Taiwanese identity. Views across the island diverge on the kind of relationship Taiwan should have with China, which is related to the complex and multilayered Taiwanese identity.
Indeed, the Taiwanese electorate faces a menu of options: a more conciliatory approach towards China under Kuomintang’s (KMT) Hou Yu-ih (侯友宜), a more internationally embraced Taiwan as a sovereign nation under Lai Ching-te (賴清德) and his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), or Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) and his Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) claiming to surpass the green-blue (pro-independence DPP and pro-unification KMT) political divide and creating a new political culture.
Yet, views on the importance of democracy as the essence of Taiwan’s existence do not diverge. Taiwanese people value it, regardless of how they define being Taiwanese or what sort of relationship they prefer with China. In fact, being able to define one’s identity is an important aspect of Taiwan’s identity as a robust democracy. For Taiwan, shielding democracy from disinformation, therefore, means defending its identity, and its very existence. Europe must learn to better appreciate and navigate these dynamics, and understand how questions of identity shape Taiwanese people’s perceptions of China. Europe should also look for inspiration in the Taiwanese people’s resolve to defend democracy from authoritarian threats.
Taiwan has been a target of disinformation campaigns propagated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for decades, seeking to undermine trust in its democracy. Beijing has exploited Taiwan’s openness — based on the respect of fundamental freedoms denied in China — to spread false claims, often generated through content farms, with content alleging to be from Taiwanese citizens, then republished in Taiwanese media. With just a few weeks until the elections, Beijing has doubled down on efforts to increase political polarisation and sow public discord.
As Puma Shen (沈伯洋) of Doublethink Lab explains, CCP-affiliated operatives spend months weaving a narrative into Taiwanese society by generating and sharing fake personal accounts, then spreading disinformation through these channels so that the public believes the narrative, without explaining how such narratives diverge from genuine discussions.
Beijing’s operatives have eagerly pushed narratives that elections are a choice between war and peace, a narrative that Taiwan’s own KMT has embraced as opposed to DPP’s Lai portraying the election as a “choice between democracy and autocracy”. Hacking people’s accounts and using them to spread disinformation via various social media or texting groups are ways Beijing and its proxies operate, according to Shen.
Taiwan’s importance for democratic resilience
Taiwan’s geostrategic importance to Europe’s prosperity and economic security is indisputable. In 2022, Taiwan was the EU’s 12th most important partner for trade in goods and the EU was the largest investor in Taiwan. This is why the 2021 Indo-Pacific Strategy noted that “the EU will also pursue its deep trade and investment relationships with partners with whom it does not have trade and investment agreements, such as Taiwan”. In its 2022 resolution on the situation in the Strait of Taiwan, the European Parliament called for the EU to enhance the existing partnership with Taiwan, including by pursuing a resilient supply chain agreement.
Going forward, Europe must also keep in mind Taiwan’s importance to its democratic resilience. Taiwan is a frontline democracy, which makes it an indispensable partner for Europe, one it should learn from as it braces for its own elections, with interference and information manipulation expected to increase, in particular from China and Russia.
Establishing a permanent European Parliament body to monitor and fight foreign interference is among the proposals European legislators put forward in their June 2023 report calling for a coordinated strategy to increase the EU’s resilience to foreign interference and information manipulations and protect the 2024 European elections. The EP has much to learn from Taiwan’s experience of setting up an anti-disinformation mechanism that relies on cooperation and partnerships with civil society organisations. The task force brings together representatives from the government, including education, cybersecurity, and digital affairs.
In its mission report following its visit to Taiwan in 2021, the INGE urged to establish an EU strategic communications hub in Taipei to bring together specialist expertise on disinformation. It is time for the EU to translate these words into action.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy is an Affiliated Scholar at the Department of Political Science of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Head of the Associates Network at 9DASHLINE, and since 2021 Adjunct Assistant Professor at the National Dong Hwa University in Hualien, Taiwan. Image credit: Flickr/Taiwan Presidential Office.