The United States is backing Taiwan’s bid to gain observer status within the World Health Organization’s governing body during a coronavirus outbreak that has further pushed underlying tensions to the forefront.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said during a Monday phone discussion with reporters that the State Department would do its “best to assist” Taiwan in gaining its “appropriate role” within the World Health Assembly, WHO’s policy-setting and decision-making group, according to a report by Voice of America News.
China claims sovereignty over the island, but Taiwan has its own elected government and refers to itself as the Republic of China.
Taiwanese and U.S. officials have raised questions about whether WHO was being unduly influenced by China. The U.S. action on Monday, which will likely rankle China, comes amid a war of words between the two nations in which the U.S. condemned Beijing for running a disinformation campaign aimed at obscuring the Chinese origins of the coronavirus outbreak.
There is well-documented evidence that China tried to cover up the existence and spread of the coronavirus, muzzled whistleblowers, misled WHO, and attempted to block outside health experts from investigating in Wuhan, where the virus is widely believed to have originated. At least one study indicated that if the Chinese government had acted more quickly, the coronavirus’s global spread would have been greatly reduced.
WHO concluded that the COVID-19 virus first appeared in the city of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province in China, and an investigative report in February found “early cases identified in Wuhan are believed to have acquired infection from a zoonotic source” in the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan.
The Chinese Communist Party has been blocking Taiwan’s representation at key WHO public health meetings since 2016, following the election and reelection of Tsai Ing-wen, an advocate for stronger Taiwanese autonomy who is viewed as an opponent by the government in Beijing. WHO lists Taiwan’s coronavirus cases and deaths under China, referring to the self-ruled democracy as “Taipei and environs” for its capital city.
The push by the State Department to help Taiwan gain access to WHO leadership meetings follows President Trump signing into law the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative Act last week, which strengthens U.S. support for Taiwan internationally.
“We think it’s important,” Pompeo said Monday. “It should be the U.S. policy to advocate, as appropriate, for Taiwan’s membership in all international organizations in which statehood is not a requirement and in which the United States is also a participant, as well as for Taiwan to be granted observer status in other appropriate international organizations.”
The move stoked the ire of Beijing.
Geng Shuang, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Friday the Chinese government “strongly” urges the U.S. “to correct its mistake, refrain from implementing this act and obstructing other countries’ pursuit of relations with China. Otherwise, it will be met with resolute countermeasures from the Chinese side.”
Last week, Taiwan accused WHO of not passing along a late-December warning about human-to-human transmission it sent about the COVID-19 outbreak in China. WHO tweeted in mid-January that “preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in Wuhan, China.”
The effort to strengthen Taiwan’s standing within WHO comes after a viral interview by Dr. Bruce Aylward, a senior adviser to WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus, in which Aylward repeatedly dodged questions about Taiwan.
Radio Television Hong Kong reporter Yvonne Tong asked the WHO official whether Taiwan should be reconsidered for WHO membership. Aylward, who led WHO’s investigative team to China in February, claimed to have trouble hearing the question before saying, “Let’s move to another one, then.”
Following the video feed cutting off, the reporter called back and again pressed Aylward for comment on Taiwan containing the coronavirus, and he declined to speak about Taiwan directly. “We’ve already talked about China, and you know, when you look across all the different areas of China, they’ve actually all done quite a good job,” Aylward responded.
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu criticized Aylward, whose effusive praise for China, including after his COVID-19 investigation in February, has been taken up by Chinese state-run outlets, which had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act in the U.S.
“Wow, can’t even utter ‘Taiwan’ in the WHO?” Wu tweeted. “You should set politics aside in dealing with a pandemic.”
The backlash prompted WHO to issue a rare statement about the controversy.
“WHO’s focus at all times is to ensure that all areas of the globe have the information they need to manage the health of their people. In a recent interview, the WHO official who headed the joint international mission to China did not answer a question on Taiwan’s response to the COVID-19 outbreak,” the WHO said. “The question of Taiwanese membership in WHO is up to WHO Member States, not WHO staff. However, WHO is working closely with all health authorities who are facing the current coronavirus pandemic, including Taiwanese health experts.”
WHO also said “with respect to the COVID-19 outbreak, the WHO Secretariat works with Taiwanese health experts and authorities, following established procedures, to facilitate a fast and effective response and ensure connection and information flow.”
Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Joanne Ou responded by saying that WHO must “continue to review and improve upon some unreasonable restrictions imposed on Taiwan based on political considerations,” according to Reuters.
Ou said WHO’s record of excluding Taiwan from technical meetings over the past decade, and particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, “shows that what the WHO said in its statement that it is learning from all regions, including Taiwan, to share ‘best practices’ with the world, differs from the facts.”
