In the World Health Organization assembly, Covid-19 and all aspects related to it are being discussed in depth. This debate is being held in the shadow of the controversy over Taiwan's participation, also because it has been successful in overcoming Covid-19.
The World Health Assembly is part of the WHO and the United Nations. The relevance of this meeting on Covid-19 is clear from the fact that the Kovid epidemic has so far victimized 213 countries and territories of the world, in addition to 4.5 million infected people and more than 3 lakh people so far has died.
Although the WHO's task is to grapple with the health problems of the world community and their representative countries, many countries have alleged that the WHO under pressure from China (or together with it) hid its faults, as well as Taiwan and its Ignored the information shared in fighting Covid-19. As a result, the world could not get the necessary information on time. Note that Taiwan has been the WHO observer country, but critics allege that Taiwan has not been called as an observer since 2016 due to the new WHO chief Doctor Tedros' proximity to China. It should also be linked with the coming of power of President Sai Ing-wen in favor of Taiwan's independence and being re-elected this year. Taiwan sometimes gets a chance at a WHO technical meeting. Due to the close proximity of WHO Chief Doctor Tedros from China, WHO has unnecessarily fallen into this unnecessary controversy.
Longing to return to the world community
In the last few days, Taiwan has tried very hard to attend the WHA meeting. Taiwan believes that because as a non-voting observer, he has been attending meetings of the World Health Assembly from 2009 to 2016, he should be given an opportunity to speak on this extraordinary occasion.
Two things are very important here. The first is that despite so much economic and strong interpersonal proximity and tourism from China, Taiwan has achieved laudable success in fighting Covid. This can be gauged from the fact that while Covid figures are in thousands in all the countries of the world, there have been 440 cases of infection so far in Taiwan with a population of more than 24 million and only 7 deaths. happened. Nearly all of the public has followed the Quarantine rules and the government's directives, with Taiwan tracing both Covid and its related rumors to a wide-ranging use of contact tracing and technology. President Sai himself has assured people to go from place to place to fight Covid and all these efforts have proved to be effective.
Successful anti-corona strategy
Taiwan's strategy to fight Covid is perhaps the most successful in the world. As soon as the Covid infection began, in December 2019, the Taiwan government sent its scientists to China for research on Covid. After the return of these scientists, the Taiwan government stopped all air flights connecting China. Luck also supported Taiwan as the school-college and all offices remained closed in the months of January-February due to Chinese New Year. Taking advantage of this, the Taiwan government extended the holiday for a few weeks. This strategy worked and Taiwan, like other countries, never had to implement a lockdown.
China objected to Taiwan joining the meeting. Under its “One China Policy”, China believes that Taiwan is not an independent country, but merely a territory of China and Taiwan has no sovereignty. In the 1970s, the United Nations was also replaced by the People's Republic of Taiwan. China (Communist China) was recognized, although Taiwan itself had received international recognition for nearly two and a half decades earlier, but it was stamped after Nixon's visit to China in 1972. This is what Taiwan's WHO meeting today The biggest hurdle in front of attending.
China's constant pressure on Taiwan
Even before the Covid crisis, China began to put diplomatic, economic, and strategic pressure on Taiwan. Not allowing Taiwan to attend all meetings of WHO since 2016 is an example of this. Last year, China successfully put pressure on all the airlines of the world and changed the name of Taiwan to “Taiwan State of China”. Air-India of India was also among those doing this. Since the beginning of Covid, China's worries have increased that Taiwan will gain the support and praise of all the countries of the world under the pretext of this epidemic. This apprehension of China is not just a bad dream for him but is becoming a reality. He feels that his trilogy of One China policy is breaking and for more than 70 years his independent identity and democracy, free trade, and human rights Taiwan is making its mark as a foster country. Covid has undoubtedly strengthened the credibility of Taiwan and especially President Sai.
While China has tried very hard to stop Taiwan, Taiwan and its supporting countries like America, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea are also supporting Taiwan's proposal to come to the meeting. There should be no opinion that if Taiwan wants to share some of its experiences on Covid, then there should be no objection to it, and also that the WHO is a platform of the Global Health Organization which should stay away from unnecessary politics.
(Rahul Mishra is Senior Lecturer of International Politics at the Asia-Europe Institute, Universiti Malaya )
Article was first published on DW.com Hindi version
Last Update: 11/11/2021