UN FAIR!

Taiwan Fights China to Join U.N.
Stewart Stogel
Tuesday September 16, 2003
United Nations -- The People's Republic of China and the Republic of China (Taiwan) are headed towards a showdown in New York City.
Taiwan's yearly drive to get the United Nations to consider its membership will be taken up in a General Assembly committee on Wednesday.

Taipei has persued what has become an annual right of autumn every year since 1991.

It has however, always run into a brick wall built by Beijing.

"We are the only country in the world not in the U.N. Is this fair? How universal is this organization?" asked Andrew Li-Yan Hsia, Taiwan's senior diplomat and director-general of its economic and cultural center in New York.

After more than 50 years as an observer, Switzerland joined the United Nations earlier this year. It became the 191st member.

Only the Holy See and the Palestinian Authority retain observer status.

Taiwan, with the world's 17th largest economy and 23 million citizens, has virtually no presence in the world body.

While Hsia admits that Taipei's chances of U.N. membership are almost nonexistent because of China's veto power, he still believes the membership drive is significant:

"They (Beijing) do not represent us. So why should we not seek (U.N.) membership?"

Hsia explained:

"Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.N. was not significant. It simply carried out policies decided by the two superpowers. So we did not feel that membership was necessary.

But since the collapse (of the Soviets) in 1991, the U.N. is now taking a more activist approach. They are now involved in trade, transport and health issues that directly impact on the people of Taiwan. So why should we not get involved? How can the U.N. decide issues that affect Taiwan and not allow us to participate?"

Beijing insists that as a "province" of China, Taiwan's welfare is their responsibility and as such there is no need for Taipei to seek U.N. membership.

Hsia blasted the Chinese policy:

"That is nonsense. They (Beijing) do not represent the 23 million people of Taiwan, nor do we want them to represent us."

He hastened to add, that unlike Beijing, Taipei has a democratically elected legislature and that body has passed laws directing the executive branch to pursue U.N. membership.

Hsia admitted that the mainland government has markedly increased pressure on both Latin American, Caribbean and African counties to refrain from backing the UN membership drive like they have done in the past.

Haiti, Macedonia and Panama are just three nations Beijing strong armed to abandon Taiwan, claimed the diplomat.

In Haiti's and Macedonia's case, the Chinese threatened to use their Security Council veto to hold up reconstruction and peacekeeping efforts if support for Taiwan continued. In Panama's case, a Hong Kong trading company, Hutchison-Whampoa, controlled by Beijing, offered the government a lucrative deal to take over the operation of the Panama Canal, which the U.S. had relinquished control of.

Occasionally, Beijing's strong arm tactics backfire.

Earlier this year, the SARS epidemic spread from mainland China throughout east Asia and to North America.

Among Asian countries, Taiwan (on a per capita basis) was hit even harder than China.

The World Health Organization (WHO), while claiming to lead the fight to combat the epidemic, in fact hampered efforts to control it.

Hsia says:

"When SARS broke out and we asked WHO for assistance, we got nothing. In fact all the information we were collecting on the outbreak was refused to be accepted by WHO."

As such, Hsia says the figures and assessments on the cause and spread of the disease were not reliable.

Beijing publicly admitted that it did not properly handle the SARS epidemic, but would not comment on its blocking of the Taiwan reporting to WHO.

Eventually, some information gathered by Taiwan was unofficially accepted by WHO, but most was exchanged on a country-by-country basis, bypassing the world body.

Even after the SARS crisis, China still opposes any Taiwan representation in the organization.

Taipei's ambassador believes that as Beijing's economic development accelerates, the pressure on Taiwan will only increase:

"They want to use Hong Kong as a model for Taiwan. Hong Kong has not worked. But, more importantly, Taiwan is not a colony, it is a country. Unlike Hong Kong we have an elected legislature we are responsible to."

Hsia expressed alarm on what he sees as China's latest strategy: targeting key industries that have powered Taiwan's economy, namely high-tech.

Taiwan's cash cow, exports of laptop computers under name brands such as Comapq, Dell and HP are being wooed by cheaper labor on the mainland.

Japan's leading maker of laptops, Toshiba, now regularly ships state-of-the-art computers from a new plant in China.

Ironically, Toshiba's Chinese factory produces computers that are powered by the latest Intel chips, made in California.

All of which has Hsia alarmed:

"The government is concerned about the export of high-tech production to China. It is talking to the industry to curb it."

The veteran diplomat summed up his government's outlook on the future: "We will continue to fight (Beijing), no matter what they do. We have no other choice."