India weighs options as Taiwan seeks its support to take part in World Health Assembly

Trump Administration nudges India to throw its weight behind Taiwan, Beijing reminds New Delhi “One China policy”

Even as Taiwan has requested India to support its bid to participate in the next session of the World Health Assembly commencing on Monday, New Delhi is still weighing its options.

The United States has been nudging India to support Taiwan’s participation at the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly (WHA), which will be held virtually on Monday and Tuesday. Beijing, however, has been aggressively countering the US campaign in favour of inviting Taiwan to attend the WHA as an “observer”. China in fact of late repeatedly reminded India the “One-China policy”, which the successive governments in New Delhi stuck to since 1949.

For latest updates on coronavirus outbreak, click here

“We are confident that, given that Taiwan has received a tremendous amount of support from general public, scholars and the media lately in India, the Government of India will appreciate Taiwan's rights in this direction (to participate at the World Health Assembly),” Chung-Kwang Tien, Taipei’s envoy to New Delhi, told the DH on Friday.

Sources in New Delhi said that India was in touch with other nations on Taiwan’s participation in the WHA and would take a stand “closer to the date” of the conclave, depending on “how the formal agenda (of the assembly) would evolve”.

Taiwan attended the World Health Assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016. But Beijing blocked its attendance since 2017 after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party was voted to the office of Taiwan’s President.

The US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and several other countries recently wrote to the WHO asking it to invite Taiwan to attend the WHA as its input on fighting the COVID-19 successfully would help in the review of the global response to the pandemic.

China vehemently opposed it as it perceives the US-led move a ploy to encourage the DPP Government in Taipei to seek independence for Taiwan. It invoked the “One-China Principle” that most of the nations around the world had accepted almost seven decades back.

The One-China policy recognizes only the People's Republic of China, which came into existence in 1949 after the communists defeated the nationalists in the civil war of China. It does not recognize the existence of Taiwan (or the Republic of China), where the nationalists retreated to and based the seat of their government after losing to the communists. India, like most of the other nations, has been adhering to One-China policy since 1949, recognizing only the People's Republic of China.

The WHA consists of the Health Ministers of the 194 member states of the World Health Organization (WHO). It is a forum that governs the WHO and sets the international health policy. The assembly generally has its annual sessions in Geneva, but it will be held through video-conference this year in view of the COVID-19 crisis.

The COVID-19 also made the WHA session all the more significant as a review of the global response to the pandemic and discussion on a strategy to deal with such global outbreaks of diseases would be high on its agenda. India will take over the chair from Japan at the end of the assembly on Tuesday.

Taiwan attended the WHA as an observer from 2009 to 2016. Beijing, however, has been blocking its attendance since 2017, after Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was voted to the office of the president of Taiwan.

The US, Japan, Australia and New Zealand and several other countries recently wrote to the WHO asking it to invite Taiwan to attend the WHA so that it can share experience of fighting the COVID-19 successfully and contribute to a review of the global response to the pandemic.

China vehemently opposed the US-led move as it perceived it as a ploy to encourage the DPP Government in Taipei to seek independence for Taiwan.

“As a part of China, Taiwan has no right to join WHO, which is a specialized agency of the United Nations restricted to only sovereign states,” said Ji Rong, counselor and spokesperson of the Embassy of People’s Republic of China in New Delhi. “The intention of Taiwan Democratic Progressive Party authorities sharing its anti-epidemic experiences is purely trying to take the epidemic as an excuse to engage in seeking independence for Taiwan and achieve its political purpose of separation through this move.”

Taipei’s envoy to New Delhi however said that Taiwan’s keenness to participate the WHA should not be seen as a political move. “It is a matter of people’s lives, public health and human rights,” he added, “Taiwan’s exclusion from WHO poses a regrettable risk to global health and safety”. He underlined that Taiwan and China were two “separate jurisdictions”, neither subordinate to the other. “Regrettably, since 2017 WHO has continually caved in to China’s unreasonable interference and discontinued its practice of issuing invitations to Taiwan to attend the WHA as an observer.”

Beijing also reminded US, India and other nations the “One-China Principle” that the most of the nations around the world had accepted almost seven decades ago.

The “One-China principle” recognizes only the People's Republic of China, which came into existence in 1949 after the communists defeated the nationalists in the civil war of China. It does not recognize the existence of Taiwan (or the Republic of China), where the nationalists retreated to and based the seat of their government after losing to the communists. India, like most of the other nations, has been adhering to One-China policy since 1949, recognizing only the People's Republic of China with no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

India-Taipei Association, which is headed by a diplomat, functions as a de facto mission of India in Taipei. Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre (TECC) in New Delhi is the de facto diplomatic and consular mission of Taiwan in India.

“(The) WHO needs Taiwan, just as Taiwan needs (the) WHO. Yet, Taiwan has long been excluded from (the) WHO due to unfair politics,” Chung-Kwang Tien, who heads the TECC in New Delhi, said. “This is regrettable given all that Taiwan could share with the world thanks to its renowned public health experience, health system and ability to perform rapid testing as well as research and manufacture vaccines and drugs against COVID-19. We can also share our methods of using Artificial Intelligence for analyzing and tracking the spread of the virus.”