Following China’s annihilation of freedom in Hong Kong, the Chinese Communist Party’s next likely target is Taiwan, home to a thriving and peaceful Chinese democracy. IWF fellows Claudia Rosett and Elisha Maldonado talk about why Taiwan matters to America, and must be defended.
Transcript
Beverly Hallberg:
Hey, everyone. It’s Beverly Hallberg. Welcome to a special pop-up episode of She Thinks, your favorite podcast from the Independent Women’s Forum, where we talk with women, and sometimes men, about the policy issues that impact you and the people you care about most. Enjoy.
Claudia:
Hi, this is Claudia Rosett. I’m a foreign policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum. And I have a great pleasure today of hosting for a discussion about Taiwan through China, Elisha Maldonado, who is a terrific writer and a senior policy fellow with the Independent Women’s Forum and a member of the New York Post Editorial Board. Elisha, welcome.
Elisha:
Hi, Claudia. Thank you for having me.
Claudia:
Great to have you. Yeah, a pleasure. Okay. We hear you wrote an article in November with the alarming headline Taiwan fears it will become the next Hong Kong. And there’s been, as people have seen in the news, a lot of terrible things have been going on in Hong Kong this year, where China has basically transformed it from a free society into another piece of China with arrest, repression, and so on. But can you tell us a little more, just for starters about what you mean that Taiwan fears it will become the next Hong Kong? What does that entail?
Elisha:
Well, Hong Kong, as we all know is democratic, had their own law and order and Taiwan was much the same. They’re independent, they still go under the name, Taiwan Republic of China, but they have free elections, they’re a free country, they are independently run and they see, as they are so close to China as well, what they’ve done to Hong Kong and because China fears freedom of democracy that they’re coming for them next. And I think that they have every right to have that fear. And I think it’s a very real one, it’s a very genuine one that now that China’s taken Hong Kong, there’s Taiwan. Let’s go get them next. And you could see them doing all these military exercises. Go ahead.
Claudia:
Maybe we should throw in just a little bit of background. What exactly is Taiwan? Back in 1949 when the communists took over China, the nationalist government, that was our ally in World War II, which helped us win World War II, was defeated and fled to Taiwan and set up the Republic of China on Taiwan. And it was a dictatorship for many decades, but then they went down and cried. And they’re now a Chinese democracy, sort of a shining example of how democracy can work with Chinese culture, just as Hong Kong wanted desperately democracy as a free culture, free society. And that’s what we’re talking about today.
Elisha:
Exactly.
Claudia:
China has claimed Taiwan as a rogue province. They want to take it back.
Elisha:
That’s right.
Claudia:
And the threats have grown and grown. Just to give people sort of a feel for the place, you went there, not so long ago. Can you tell us a little bit about you went there on a Taiwan Government-sponsored trip-
Elisha:
That’s right.
Claudia:
But there’s a reason why you chose that path and why they are bringing journalists over and trying desperately really to get attention. Can you give us a little bit of background on that?
Elisha:
Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, I got to go last year, last December, actually. And it was just a really, really wonderful and enriching experience. The Taiwanese, they love America, they love democracy, and they want to be our friend. They’re really trying hard to be a best friend. And so, they’re trying to bring over journalists and other writers and thinkers to see how their country works, to see that it is a democracy and hopefully give them some support.
And so, it was easy for me to say yes to it because I already believe that. I’m already on their side to be honest because I think that we should be friends with people who love democracy, especially in that region, especially with China so close, trying to go for world domination because let’s are honest, that’s what they’re going for. But it’s a really vibrant culture, a very free and democratic one, lovely people open and really love America. They kept saying, everyone I talked to, “We love America. We love Trump.” But I think that they just appreciate that President Trump has been hard on China and that has kind of been a comfort. But it was a really great experience to go and get to talk to a bunch of people who share the values that Americans share.
Claudia:
Maybe let’s chat a little bit about what happened at the very beginning of this year with the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic when we saw the difference, I think in the very stark contrast between China and Taiwan. China covered up the outbreak until it was really starting to spread. Taiwan actually alerted the World Health Organization by asking about it. Again, can you tell us a little bit about that? What is sort of the basic difference between communist China and free China, which is what we’re talking about when we contrast the People’s Republic of China with Taiwan?
Elisha:
Well, I mean, I think the Taiwanese, they know by proxy just how China works. And so they were quicker than probably the rest of the world to what they were doing or covering up coronavirus. And the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros, well, a long name, he’s kind of a handmaiden for, not kind of, he is, he was put into the power position by China. So you can see how the World Health Organization helped cover that up. But Taiwan got in front of it because they know how China works and they just said, “All right, we can’t trust anything that they’re saying, so we’re going to deal with this on our own.” And if you look at their response to coronavirus, haven’t shut down, the economy is vibrant. I think that they have like a record number, a low number of deaths. Last, time I looked, it was like seven or something like that. It may have gone up, but ever so slightly.
Claudia:
Gone up very slightly, but basically they are one of the lowest numbers in the world.
Elisha:
Yeah.
Claudia:
They are still well below a thousand cases and a very small number of deaths. They immediately put on all sorts of measures.
Elisha:
They did one other thing in that particular, that critical interval in January when China was just letting it spread and lying about it and the World Health Organization was lying about it. Taiwan held a presidential election in the middle of that time.
Claudia:
That’s right. That’s right. I’m just trying to think, can you give us a little more sense of, you’ve been there, what does it feel like? You get out of the airport, what kind of place do you see? Is this the developed world? Is this a different world? Is it like us? Viscerally, what do you remember from being there?
Elisha:
Well, I mean, the first thing I thought of was the colors, of course, in the trees and just how beautiful it was, the demographics. That’s the word I’m looking for. Just the way it looked, but it feels different in that any new city you go to feels different. But I just remember just being welcomed with open arms and they were just so kind. The overarching thought was, “Wow, these people are going out of their way to make sure these American tourists are taken care of, who get to see their country, as many parts of it as they can and who answer questions openly.”
We got to go to different election headquarters for some different parties and they were all just so willing and desperate actually, just to show you how well their elections are running, even despite the Chinese differed information attempts, but in Taipei, how smoothly that they can run. So, that stands out.
Claudia:
So, we have there the difference between one-party rule in communist China and the various parties that you had a chance to speak freely with on Taiwan. Now, one of the important issues here is what place does Taiwan occupy in the world? Because we have here a free China. I mean, this is what we need China to be, what we hoped for decades that the People’s Republic of China would become. And here, on Taiwan, that’s actually what’s emerged, a democratic China. There are 193 countries in the UN, of these, how many countries still recognize Taiwan?
Elisha:
So, Taiwan has only 15 allies in total. That’s including the Vatican, which is the only one in Europe. And the rest is a bunch of little tiny islands, Latin American, Caribbean countries, some small East Asia Pacific countries. But all places that most Americans would not even know is on the map or the name of, so that tells you a lot.
Claudia:
So, among the world’s great democracies, basically not one recognizes Taiwan. This is due in part to China’s constant campaign to hive off, to take away countries that deal officially with Taiwan that recognizes as part of the effort to downgrade it. Can you talk about the countries that do recognize Taiwan?
Elisha:
Yeah. So, I mean, I would say also, this is what Beijing does. When I talked to Foreign Minister Wu and he said that his fear is that Taiwan is left out there, dangling alone. And when you look at some of the allies that they have, not to diminish the allies that they do have, but the Marshall Islands, Eswatini, Belize, Haiti, Nicaragua, there’s St. Kitts and Nevis, so these smaller islands, the smallest, but Beijing, their goal is to keep stripping away some of their bigger allies. And since President Tsai first took office in 2016, so over the past four years, China has poached seven of their formal allies, Dominican Republic, Panama, El Salvador, São Tomé and Príncipe, some other ones too. So, that’s how it works.
Claudia:
So, China is poaching away the countries that recognize, legitimize Tai. Tsai Ing-wen is an interesting character. I’d love to hear your impression of her that she always strikes me as this enormously collected thoughtful woman navigating one of the most difficult jobs in world politics. Is that kind of right?
Elisha:
Oh, yeah. I totally agree with that. She’s a tiny little lady, but she is fierce to me as well. Calm, cool, collected, but fierce. She’s a super woman running a free China and not backing down to Beijing. She’s not afraid to stand their grounds. In the run up to this election, the Chinese, who are great gas lighters and excellent at disinformation were trying to flood all of this weird information out there about her when I was in Taiwan. If I remember the story correctly, they were trying to say that she was pregnant and all sorts of weird things that went against some kind of cultural thing, which I guess is a terrible story for them not doing a very good job of telling it. But to withstand all of those kinds of disinformation attacks and not be cowed.
Claudia:
So, disinformation, the attempt to disenfranchise Taiwan as a member of the international…
Elisha:
Yeah. I don’t like the phrase international community, but that’s what China’s trying to evict Taiwan from.
Claudia:
You know what I think is interesting. Yeah, go ahead.
Elisha:
I was going to add this because I think it’s interesting and I think it’s a testament to how quickly Beijing works. So Foreign Minister Wu, when I talked to him in August had told me that just recently, so within that month of August, Taipei had established a representative office in Somaliland, which is close to Somalia. And almost immediately China’s ambassador in Somalia had offered the Somaliland president a development package on the condition that they seize talks with Taiwan at all. In like no time at all, and this is Somaliland, like what are they actually going to really do for Taiwan if push came to shove? But it’s still a testament, I think to how terrified China is by freedom of democracy. Sorry, I just thought that was interesting because he told me that.
Claudia:
That’s important. Actually, that’s a great illustration of this horrendous bullying behavior. This is part of a world scene in which, as you mentioned, China aspires to become the dominant world power. And part of that formula, the first steps are destroyed the free society in Hong Kong, as you wrote, somehow destroy the free society in Taiwan. You’ve mentioned disinformation. You’ve mentioned how they try and take away countries that recognize them, poach them. What else? What other threats does Taiwan face from China? How dire is this?
Elisha:
Well, I mean, we should definitely examine the real ramp-up of libertarian aggression in the States, in the East China Sea, in the South China Sea, as I write in September, it was near daily military exercise of aggression flying over Taiwanese airspace. It’s a show to say, “Look what we can do. Get ready.” And those exercises have been near-daily. When one of our White House officials went to visit, they ramped up their whole weekend full of aggression and actually getting into the waters, too, now just to show them, we can come if we want to.
And their military unfortunately is much larger than Taiwan. So there’s a real fear that they could be outgunned and they are outgunned actually. But Taiwan is working on bolstering it’s defensive and ramping up its military, which is good for them, they need to, but also why they need more allies like the United States, for instance, to come out and say.
Claudia:
The Trump Administration has been selling them weapons, as we head into the interesting mysteries of 2021. The US Administration has been selling them weapons at a picked up pace that they may need to defend themselves. And if you maybe just paint a picture of the geography there, it’s a relatively narrow strait that separates the island of Taiwan from the Mainland of China. And along the coast, China has positioned missiles for years.
But now you’re seeing this huge military modernization in China and they built a blue-water navy, which has been taking over sort of creating artificial islands in the South China Sea to threaten freedom of navigation and Taiwan fits within striking distance of all that. Do you have any sense of how imminent a threat might be? How dangerous is this situation?
Elisha:
I think that it’s pretty dire. Before this was said, which is true, whenever China faces internal discord, like creating a pandemic by hiding it, for instance, they focus outwards. So they take the heat off themselves, at least we think that they’re taking the heat off themselves. They try to muck other things up around the world. So I think that was pretty dangerous. I think that we need to be on Taiwan’s side, much faster than we’re moving, in my opinion.
Claudia:
There are a number of things… Among the places that make it difficult for Taiwan is the United Nations, which excludes them, which has not allowed them, which let them take part as an observer for a while at the World Health Organization, but then kicked them out again in 2017. And in most cases doesn’t even allow them in the building. This is the kind of challenge they’ve got on every front. Can you give us some idea of what it is that the United States can do, needs to do, must do, and why that matters? Why is it so important?
Elisha:
I think the first and foremost is to come out openly and staunchly on the side of Taiwan. They haven’t done that historically. As I note in my piece, they’ve operated on this kind of strategic ambiguity kind of principle, whereby they can keep peace with China, at least on the surface, by not antagonizing them by supporting Taiwan. And then let China know that if push comes to shove, that the United States would come in for Taiwan. But I think that we’re past that. And I honestly believe that if the United States just came out and said, “We are going to stand with Taiwan and if there’s any kind of military action or aggression toward Taiwan, they will have an ally and a defender as well.” And I think if we did that, I firmly believe that the UK would join, Australia would join, Japan would join. Now we’re talking about bigger allies.
Claudia:
Now we’re talking about an alliance that could really matter in Asia.
Elisha:
Exactly.
Claudia:
Which is one of the things that we don’t quite have. And, of course, Taiwan occupies this sort of strange status where it’s not treated as a country, even though it has its own government, its own borders, all the features of a country.
Elisha:
Yeah, it doesn’t.
Claudia:
China claims it as a province and Taiwan participates in things under these various odd labels, Taipei, China, the Trade and Economic Office, and so on.
If the US were to actually go and… America recognized Taiwan, the Republic of China as China, until Nixon’s rapprochement with communist China in 1972.
And then James Carter normalized relations with China in ’79 and Taiwan went into this strange status. If America were to recognize Taiwan as a country, no doubt China would have a fit.
Elisha:
Yes.
Claudia:
But would that be a good thing? Tell us a little bit about that.
Elisha:
I mean, I think so. Look at where we are. China is increasingly more aggressive, not just in Taiwan, but around the world. Look at what the communists have done this year. And they’re unapologetic about it. If you look at what they’re doing to the Uyghurs, the surveilling of their own citizens in their country. If they don’t care about those things, then they definitely don’t care about anyone else in the world. And I think that we don’t really have much to lose, I guess I would say, because one way or another, I feel like there’s going to be a clash with China one way or another. We could get ahead of that I think.
Claudia:
I was going to say, maybe that’s a good note to wrap this up. I think it’s important just to underline as clearly as we possibly can the stakes here. Years ago, Elisha, I had an editor who called me up in the middle of the night, I was working in Hong Kong and said to me, “I want you to take this down.” And he said, “Red China, Red China, Red China, Red China, Free China, Free China, Free China, Free China.” They made him spell it and write about that. What’s the basic-basic contrast here, and how does this matter to the future of the 21st century, the future of the world? I mean, how big are these stakes?
Elisha:
They’re massive. If we want a world in which China gets bigger and bigger and get to squelch any kind of freedom at all, or dissent, if the world is okay with that being taken over with, then, by all means, let them have their way. And they will get it. So I think that it’s really important that we defend places like China that share the same values because that’ll catch on I think, as I said, and we have to fight against that for freedom to go on, I guess. That’s a weird way to say that. But we have to fight against the communists who would take down anyone who stands in their way. And Taiwan, they’re doing their best.
Claudia:
Precisely. It does seem to be the way. If you look for a way forward, what do we do about a China that is ruled by a really, basically hostile government with ambitions to rule the world? And there we have Taiwan with a free society, a functioning democracy. And I think as you said, a fierce president.
Elisha:
Yes.
Claudia:
Sticks to her guns. Thank you so much for some insight-
Elisha:
Thank you.
Claudia:
… into what it is and why it matters. And thank you, Elisha, it’s been a pleasure talking with you.
Elisha:
You as well, Claudia.
Claudia:
Yeah. For more information, please look to the iwf.org site at Elisha’s article and for more information there. Thank you, everybody.