Taiwan's W.H.O. bid has sown confusion

Part of China’s ‘united front’ strategy to annex Taiwan involves maintaining and, at times, escalating efforts to keep Taiwan locked out of any international organization that it dares try to join without first paying homage to the so-called One China principle.

In the case of the Olympics, Taiwan has long participated under the ridiculous name, Chinese Taipei. Taiwan has no other choice except to boycott the games.

The W.H.O. lockout is more serious, however. During the SARS crisis, China had the audacity to claim it was “taking care of” the situation in Taiwan, which was a baldfaced lie. Of course, various heads of power around the world just nodded their assent. Taiwan had to fight SARS without any international assistance.

The current W.H.O. Director-General, Margaret Chan, is from China, making it even more unlikely that this broken link in the global disease-fighting network will be fixed. The whole world may end up paying dearly for China’s political arrogance.

The multiple strategies adopted by Taiwan this year in its bid for full WHO membership ended up blurring the focus of the nation, political commentators said yesterday. Officials should reassess these strategies ahead of Taiwan’s bid for UN membership in September, they said.

The nation’s strategy this year was the brainchild of President Chen Shui-bian, who said that Taiwan needed to apply for full WHO membership under the name “Taiwan.”

Parallel to this, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said it would continue to push for “meaningful participation” in the WHO as well as membership under observer status at the World Health Assembly (WHA).

The WHA last Monday turned down a motion which would have put Taiwan’s bid for membership on the agenda. “Although the outcome was expected, I don’t think MOFA and the Department of Health were well-prepared for this year’s bid,” said Lo Chi-cheng, political science professor at Soochow University.

Posted by Beagle17
"RSS here": http://feeds.feedburner.com/GnnBeagle17 Grew up in Nova Scotia. Hold BSc. in Biology and Grad. Diploma Journalism. Moved to Korea in 1997, and Taiwan in 1999. Currently teaching, writing, and doing Web design. Concerned about depleted...

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