‘Is China running the UN?’

Despite being trapped in diplomatic limbo, Taiwan boasts one of the most widely accepted passports in the world, allowing Taiwanese citizens visa-free entry or visas on arrival in 145 countries — more than double the 71 countries available to holders of Chinese passports.

One notable destination that does not accept Taiwanese passports, however, is the United Nations, where the 78th session of the General Assembly convenes today. Taiwan is not a member of the UN, which despite claiming to be a neutral organization representing the entire world, defers to Beijing on matters of Taiwan’s participation in the global body and its specialized agencies, including the World Health Organization, the International Civil Aviation Organization, and UNESCO, among others.

According to the UN’s own founding principles, such treatment would be unfair to any sovereign country. And if one puts China’s claims aside, Taiwan certainly appears to be a sovereign country: It has its own democratically elected government, its own military, customs regime, and currency.

Aside from excluding Taiwan’s more than 23 million people from the global body, China’s isolation of its democratic neighbor via the UN, and its attendant goal of annexing the island nation, has global ramifications — a fact that is receiving more attention in the China discourse across Asia and Europe.

In an Indo-Pacific region on edge due to a China that is increasingly comfortable throwing its diplomatic and military weight around, countries including Japan, Australia, and the Philippines are coordinating with the United States — and each other — more than ever before to prepare for a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Running parallel to this preparation are increasingly frequent unofficial visits by politicians from the four countries — with a bipartisan group of Australian lawmakers expected later this month.

On the other side of the Eurasian continent, much of Central and Eastern Europe has moved closer to Taiwan in the past three years — a shift that has been accelerated by China’s all-weather friend Russia invading Ukraine in February 2022. Parliamentary diplomacy by European Union member states has reached the point that there’s almost always a delegation in Taipei or on the way.

Even the government of the United Kingdom, which only eight years ago was heralding a “golden era” in its ties with China, is now seeing Taiwan in a new light. On August 30, the influential foreign affairs committee of the House of Commons issued a new report in which it declared that “Taiwan is already an independent country, under the name Republic of China.”

“Taiwan possesses all the qualifications for statehood,” the report said, “including a permanent population, a defined territory, government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states — it is only lacking greater international recognition.”

The chances of Taiwan being allowed to participate in the UN system in the near-term without China’s approval are next to zero. Nevertheless, support for Taiwan among democracies is growing as they wake up to the threat to their political systems posed by China — a threat that Taiwan has been dealing with for decades.

The UN’s continued exclusion of Taiwan is one of the most obvious manifestations of China’s growing influence within the organization. That influence could be helpful in containing geopolitical damage should Beijing choose to initiate a war across the strait.

UN on the defensive

In what has become an annual ritual, Taiwan’s government is once again pushing for the UN to recognize its right to engage with the global body, even if just as an observer.

Taiwan’s exclusion is “a blatant violation of the UN Charter and its principles of universality and leaving no one behind,” foreign minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮 Wú Zhāoxiè) told The China Project. “This is why we continue to campaign for meaningful participation in the UN system.”

As the possibility of a war of conquest instigated by Beijing looms, Taiwan’s exclusion from the UN highlights the global body’s cognitive dissonance with regard to its founding principles. Article 1 of the UN Charter enshrines the “principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples”, while Article 2 prohibits the “threat or use of force in international relations.”

The UN’s barring of Taiwanese officials, citizens and even journalists from entering its premises at Beijing’s behest is coming under increasing scrutiny — a trend that is likely to continue as China’s government is increasingly belligerent towards the democratic neighbor that it claims as its rightful territory, despite having never ruled it.

Earlier this year, an exchange at UN headquarters in New York between journalists and Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, underscored just how much more attention is being paid to Taiwan’s status (or lack of status) in the UN — as well as the organization’s inability to clearly explain why it handles Taiwan the way it does.

On March 27, as Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文 Cài Yīngwén) was preparing for a transit stop in New York en route to Central America, Irish journalist Yvonne Murray of RTÉ News – herself a former Beijing correspondent — posed a simple question to the spokesman. The exchange, a transcript of which can be found on the UN website (video on Youtube here), became contentious.

Murray: So, Secretary-General is clearly seen as a champion of democratic values. Given that the President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, is in the U.S. this week, will come to New York later in the week and is the leader of what’s considered Asia’s leading democracy, does the Secretary-General have any message for her?

Dujarric: The Secretary-General’s position on China is guided by the relevant General Assembly resolution on the One China policy.

Murray: Sorry. I’m not asking about China, I’m asking about Taiwan and its democracy…

Dujarric: No, no, I understand, and that’s the answer to your question.

Murray: Okay. One other question, then. No message for President Tsai Ing-wen, but what about the Taiwanese citizens, the passport holders who are not even allowed into this building to take a tour? Does the Secretary-General have anything to say to that?

Dujarric: The policy of the UN is that the premises of UN Headquarters are open to people with identifications of Member States of the UN.

Murray’s line of questioning was picked up by another reporter who noted that in previous years, Taiwanese journalists had been allowed to enter the UN building. When asked when and how the change occurred, Dujarric said he didn’t know about that and would check.

The same journalist pressed the UN official, noting that Kosovo is not a UN member state — yet its officials are permitted within the UN premises, and were allowed to brief the Security Council.

After a visibly annoyed Dujarric said he’d check on that as well, the reporter said, “I mean it seems to me all of these people are citizens of the world. And wouldn’t have thought that the Secretary-General is someone who wants to practice discrimination.”

The spokesman called on yet another journalist, who followed up on the Taiwan thread asking, “For UN, Taiwan is part of China or not?”

Dujarric responded: “Our position on China is guided by the General Assembly resolution passed in 1972 or 1973 on the One China policy.”

The final question of the briefing went to a French reporter, Célhia de Lavarène, who described attempting to bring Taiwanese journalists into the building years earlier, “and we could not, because China said no.”

“I want to know,” she asked, “Is China running the UN?”

Dujarric did not answer the question, only deriding it as “one of the most ridiculous questions I’ve heard today,” after which he ended the briefing.

Twisting the facts

While it would be unreasonable to expect a UN spokesperson to remember the date and details of every UN General Assembly resolution, Dujarric’s answers to one of the better-known resolutions contained multiple inaccuracies.

Passed in 1971, UNGA Resolution 2758 paved the way for the People’s Republic of China to assume the China seat — a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The P.R.C. replaced the Republic of China, which was an original signatory to the UN Charter in 1945, but which fled to Taiwan in 1948-1949 in order to escape annihilation by Máo Zédōng’s 毛泽东 ’s communist revolution.

Contrary to Dujarric’s assertion, nowhere in the resolution’s text is the term “One-China policy” mentioned. More importantly, the resolution does not mention Taiwan at all. What it does mention is the expulsion of “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek [蔣介石 Jiǎng Jièshí] from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”

The resolution’s official title belies its Cold War origins. While Chiang and the R.O.C. were anti-communist stalwarts, Mao and the P.R.C. were prominent members of the Communist bloc, second only to the Soviet Union. Communist-controlled Albania tabled the resolution, which it entitled “Restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations.” This phrasing is misleading, given that the P.R.C. had never been part of the UN. Nevertheless, it passed, ending years of votes on the issue of China’s representation.

By 1971, Generalissimo Chiang and his Chinese Nationalist Party aka the Kuomintang, were already well into their third decade of ruling Taiwan under brutal martial law, through which a Chinese identity was imposed on the Taiwanese people. Expressions of Taiwanese identity could get one detained, tortured, and/or killed by the Kuomintang party-state.

Despite having no clear path toward retaking China, Chiang insisted that his government in Taipei was the sole legal government of China, while Mao and the CCP used the P.R.C.’s exclusion from the UN to undermine the global body’s legitimacy.

In the years preceding 1971, R.O.C. allies proposed alternative options that might have allowed Taiwan to remain in the United Nations, said James Lin, a professor of Taiwan history at the University of Washington. For example, U.S. government officials, including Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, privately presented their R.O.C. counterparts with proposals for dual representation – meaning the R.O.C. and the P.R.C. would both be recognized in the UN.

While this may not have actually come to fruition given the voting bloc that the P.R.C. had marshaled in its favor among UN voting members, the idea never reached the General Assembly floor, Lin said. Chiang Kai-shek rejected any solution that might have allowed the P.R.C. to have formal representation in the UN, even if it meant a withdrawal of the R.O.C.

“Chiang was adamant that the R.O.C. was the only legitimate government representing ‘China,’ and he looked down upon the international organization as of secondary importance, a mere tool to further his real end of military strength for the R.O.C.,” Lin said of the UN.

Chiang’s son and eventual successor, Chiang Ching-kuo (蔣經國 Jiǎng Jīngguó), found his father’s lack of concern for the R.O.C.’s position in the UN alarming and tried to work out a secret deal with the Americans to pursue a dual recognition plan.

“The repeated votes on the R.O.C.’s status were perceived as humiliating and demoralizing by the elder Chiang, so he ordered the withdrawal of the R.O.C. from the UN before the dual recognition plan could be voted upon, in essence allowing Resolution 2758 to pass,” Lin said.

“Chiang’s obstinacy singlehandedly doomed Taiwan to its current fate of being excluded from the UN, which is a tragedy since he was an authoritarian strongman who did not represent the democratic will of Taiwanese people.”

Over the past half-century, Beijing has used the general lack of understanding of the wording and intention of Resolution 2758 to push the narrative that the UN endorses its claim to be the legitimate government of Taiwan.

Wu, Taiwan’s foreign minister, is all too familiar with the misunderstanding that has resulted from China’s propaganda push.

The resolution “has nothing to do with Taiwan,” Wu said. “It does not authorize the People’s Republic of China to represent Taiwan in the UN system. Taiwan is not a part of the P.R.C., and the P.R.C. has never ruled Taiwan for even one day.”

While Mao and company were happy to accede to the UN Security Council, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai was aware that the resolution left the status of Taiwan undecided. Given that China was gripped by the political chaos of the Cultural Revolution when it joined the UN, addressing the “Taiwan question” would have to wait.

As Jessica Drun and Bonnie Glaser note in their 2022 paper The Distortion of UN Resolution 2758 and Limits on Taiwan’s Access to the United Nations, Beijing started working in earnest on addressing this issue in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Taiwan was democratizing.

“The P.R.C. has since worked to ‘internationalize’ its ‘One China’ Principle [the CCP stance that Taiwan is part of China] and to conflate it with UN Resolution 2758, a revisionist shift from the original intent of the document,” they write in the report, published by the Washington, D.C.-based German Marshall Fund.

“Beijing has managed to further institutionalize and normalize its stance on Taiwan within the UN by signing secret agreements with UN bodies, restricting Taiwan’s access to the UN and its facilities, and embedding P.R.C. nationals across various levels of UN staff,” the report says.

The authors also note that China has succeeded in altering the language used by the UN when referring to Taiwan. Internal UN references no longer mention “Taiwan”, but rather “Taiwan, Province of China” or “Taiwan, China”.

The faxes showing politics trumping public health at the UN

The World Health Organization, a UN specialized agency, has emerged as a key battleground for China’s suppression of Taiwan via the organization.

In 2005, China signed a memorandum of understanding with the WHO Secretariat that strictly managed how Taiwan-related issues would be handled. The next year, Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍 Chén-Féng Fùzhēn), the former head of the Department of Health of Hong Kong, where she is known for mishandling the response to the SARS epidemic of 2002–2003, became WHO Director-General, after having served as Assistant Director-General.

Taiwan’s election of the China-friendly KMT president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九 Mǎ Yīngjiǔ) in 2008 was rewarded by Beijing, which dropped its objection to Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly — the WHO’s annual meeting that guides global health policy. That participation, however, was limited to observer status.

Despite the previously rocky relationship between the KMT and the Communist Party, they share similar Leninist and Han ethnonationalist roots, and both were alarmed by the rise of Taiwanese identity in the democratic era.

Documents obtained by The China Project highlight the post-2005 power dynamic between Beijing and the UN. Two faxes from China’s permanent mission in Geneva to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights highlight not only that Beijing’s consent is required for Taiwan’s participation in the WHA, but also that its consent is completely predicated on politics.

The first fax, sent on May 19, 2016, in the last year of Ma’s presidency, portrays China as benevolent and magnanimous as it permits Taiwan’s observer status for the eighth year running. One paragraph makes it clear that this magnanimity is based upon the suppression of Taiwanese self-determination:

“The participation by the Taiwan Province of China as an observer in the annual World Health Assembly since 2009 has been a special arrangement based on the One-China principle. As a sign of goodwill, this special arrangement demonstrates the sincere wish of the Chinese Government to maintain the smooth and peaceful development of the ties across the Taiwan Straits, and to improve the well-being of our Taiwan compatriots in the field of public health.”

Beijing’s mood soured the following day, when Tsai was inaugurated for her first term. In her first speech as president, she called for peace across the strait and continued talks between the two sides, while also emphasizing that she was elected by her fellow citizens to defend Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Taiwan participated in the WHA days later. It has not been allowed to do so since.

In response to Tsai’s refusal to renounce Taiwan’s sovereignty, a May 10, 2017 fax from the Chinese mission in Geneva told the UN clearly that Taiwan was to be excluded from the WHA for political reasons:

More countries speaking up for Taiwan

Both the P.R.C. government in Beijing and the R.O.C. government in Taipei refuse to have official diplomatic relations with any country that recognizes the government on the other side of the strait. As a result, even Taiwan’s closest partners, such as the U.S., do not recognize the government in Taipei (Washington cut ties in 1979). Today only 12 countries and the Holy See have official ties with the R.O.C. — all of them, with the notable exception of the Vatican, speak up on Taiwan’s behalf during the General Assembly.

Although the U.S. and other democracies do not officially recognize Taiwan’s statehood, there is not necessarily a contradiction between lack of ties and advocating for Taiwan’s meaningful engagement with the UN, Glaser told The China Project.

“If the US were supporting Taiwan’s membership in the UN as a sovereign state, then there would be a contradiction,” she said. “But US policy is clear — it supports meaningful participation for Taiwan in international organizations that require sovereignty for membership.”

“There is no legal basis for barring Taiwan’s participation in the UN and its specialized agencies,” she added. “UNGA Resolution 2758 was silent on that question — I would argue that Beijing also holds that view since it allowed Taiwan to participate as an observer in the WHA.”

With this in mind, the Tsai administration has been working on building a larger international base of support, with both Tsai and foreign minister Wu in particular meeting with the steady stream of international delegations that have been passing through Taipei.

The number of visitors has noticeably increased since 2020, when China’s image took a hit because of its handling of the pandemic, and a global semiconductor shortage woke many capitals around the world up to Taiwan’s near-monopoly on high-end chips.

In May of this year, the unofficial diplomatic missions of the U.S., Japan, Germany, U.K., Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, and Lithuania in Taipei issued a joint statement calling for Taiwan’s “meaningful engagement” with the WHO and participation as an observer in the WHA. Neither was granted, but the number of countries signing on to this annual statement has been gradually increasing.

“We are pleased to see that more and more countries understand what Taiwan has to offer and are willing to support Taiwan by urging the UN to include Taiwan and grant its people and journalists access to the UN premises,” Taiwan’s foreign minister Wu said.

“Unfortunately, by bowing to China’s pressure, the United Nations continues to misinterpret and misrepresent the UNGA Resolution 2758 and deny Taiwan and its 23 million people the legitimate right to contribute to human welfare.”

Despite the continued exclusion of the Taiwanese people from the UN system, it appears that not everything Taiwanese is unwelcome.

Just last week, the WHO announced that it signed a licensing agreement with the Taiwanese company Medigen Vaccine Biologics for its Covid-19 vaccine, putting a spotlight on the tech powerhouse’s robust biomedical industry.

Surprising nobody, the WHO press release announcing the agreement did not contain the word “Taiwan”.