'Taiwan can help' and the WHO

An examination of Taiwan’s exclusion from the WHO and its struggle for international recognition during the pandemic.

Image Credit: tsaiian

“WHO can help?” demanded the full page ad in the New York Times on April 10. “Taiwan”, came the answer. “In a time of isolation, we choose solidarity.” 

Taiwan Can Help was no government-sponsored publicity drive, however. The ad and its subsequent social media campaign were the initiative of Taiwanese internet personality Chang Chih-chyi, designer Aaron Nieh and the combined crowdfunding force of a nation bullied, marginalised and excluded from international forums like the World Health Organization (WHO).

Since its foundation in 1949, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has refused to acknowledge Taiwan as an independent sovereign state. To engage with China politically is to abide by these terms - you cannot establish diplomatic relations with Beijing if you also wish to maintain an embassy in Taipei. 

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also throws much diplomatic weight into keeping Taiwan from international organisations. Taiwan was thrown out of the UN the moment Nixon established relations with the PRC, and is unlikely to gain re-entry unless the balance of power in East Asia changes drastically. Beijing also keeps Taiwan from the WHO, which hinders the flow of medical supplies, stunts knowledge exchange and even endangers lives. 

Taiwan´s medical system is often cited among the best in the world. Despite their immediate proximity to the virus’ source, Taiwan has dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic (officially titled “Wuhan Novel Coronavirus” by the Taiwanese medical authorities) more effectively than almost any other country. Had this knowledge base been shared across national borders at such a forum as the WHO, more effective strategies for combating the disease could perhaps have been developed. 

On April 29, the U.S. and Japanese governments asked allies Britain, France, Germany and Australia to co-sign their letter to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the WHO. They requested that Taiwan be allowed a presence at the yearly World Health Assembly in Geneva. All 10 nations of the Formosa Club, Australia and the EU then voiced support for Taiwan’s official re-entry into the organisation. 

In a press conference following NATO’s concerted expression of support, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen of the Democratic People´s Party (DPP) told reporters: “the facts show that the harder China attempts to oppress us, the stronger the voices of our allies become in support.” 

U.S. President Donald Trump opened April with a different angle of attack, charging Tedros and the WHO with China-centrism and generally ineffective pandemic control when it was most required. 

Alleged illicit relations between China and the WHO have become common access meme material across Taiwan. Tedros’ organisation is often referred to as the “WHO with Chinese characteristics” in parody of ritualised “Xi Jinping thought” slogans, while internet users often suggest the director general himself could consider “joining the party”. The German Mercator research institute provided weight to such claims of untoward involvement in a recently published article, pointing out the WHO´s consistent and exaggerated praise of China’s response to the virus, often to the detriment of expressing other vital information. 

Before the WHO classified Covid-19 as a public health emergency in late January, Tedros described Beijing’s efforts in controlling the virus as “encouraging”, and urged the rest of the world to learn from their example. He also insists that the Chinese government have remained “beginning to end, open, transparent and responsible’ despite the deep bureaucratic failure that covered up a pandemic-in-waiting while branding its whistle-blowing medical staff ‘subverters of national rule.” 

Certainly, Beijing’s response to Covid-19 was decisive and effective once their great state machinery eventually acknowledged its existence. They have so far even averted the spectre of secondary outbreaks now erupting across an already tired and broken Europe. Yet Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand and Japan also produced extraordinary results despite relative proximity to the pandemic’s source. As host nations for the virus, any of these countries could have provided far better disease prevention models for the rest of the world. Lessons learned from a source nation like China about effective internal control are far less useful to a country in the early stages of a pandemic than those from a country like Taiwan about limiting viral arrival and border spread. Why did Tedros not promote Taiwanese, Korean, Thai or Japanese methods of controlling the virus to the rest of the world? 

“Choosing a politician to lead the WHO is guaranteed to turn his professional organisation political, because a politician has eyes for profit and not principle”

At the World Health Assembly in mid-February, Thailand´s representative Suwit Wibulpolprasert suggested Tedros should himself be in quarantine rather than before the assembly - sharp reference to the director general’s recent trips to China and publicly cordial meetings with Premier Xi Jinping.

Widespread claims of a Beijing-WHO conspiracy were bolstered just days later, when the Chinese sci-fi writer Fang Zhouzi pointed out a difference in the English and Chinese versions of the WHO’s pandemic guidelines. In the English version, several practices not useful in the treatment of Covid-19 were listed: smoking, taking antibiotics and “seeking traditional medicine”. In the Chinese version, the latter instruction was missing. When discovered, WHO officials scrambled not to fill in the missing Chinese, but delete the “offending” English. Fang Zhouzi concluded his discovery: “choosing a politician to lead the WHO is guaranteed to turn his professional organisation political, because a politician has eyes for profit and not principle.”

Why Tedros and the WHO lean so heavily towards Beijing is difficult to analyse. The Liberty Times have suggested that astronomical Chinese investment in Tedros’ home country of Ethiopia might be colouring opinion, but their article also pointed out that pro-Beijing sentiment at the WHO did not begin with the current director general. His predecessor Margaret Chan concluded her posting at the WHO only to serve in China as chair of the National Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Committee. 

The Mercator article provided perhaps fairer analysis, pointing out Beijing’s traditional sensitivity to humiliation. If Tedros and the WHO had spent time holding the CCP accountable with accusations and investigations at the beginning of the year, a sore Beijing might have responded defensively, limiting the outward flow of information and thereby worsening the pandemic overall.

Xi Jinping and his cohort are certainly famed for their “glass hearts” (bōlí xīn) - a Chinese internet term meaning much the same as “snowflake” in the English speaking world. When a background texture in Taiwanese videogame “Devotion” was found to read “Xi Jinping Winnie the Pooh” in morse last year, CCP backlash was such that its developer had to apologise and pull the game from shelves. 

Glass hearts are easily shattered - criticism from such a public body as the WHO might certainly have pressed pooh’s buttons. 

Nonetheless, none of this analysis covers Tedros’ litany of fawning excuses and excessive praise. Facing international pressure, the director general was forced to respond on April 8. He returned fire by accusing the Taiwanese diplomatic office of complicity in “cooperating with the Taiwanese people” to launch a racially motivated ad hominem smear campaign against himself. 

Tsai Ing-wen strongly refuted any claims of racial targeting the following day, extending Tedros an invitation to Taiwan that he might “get a better view from the ground.” The Taiwanese public were less tactful, immediately venting their frustration across the PTT forum (a popular message board) and various Line groups. “This clearly has nothing to do with race,” wrote one highly upvoted commentator, “and everything to do with Tedros and the CCP.”

Just days after Tedros charged the entire island of Taiwan with racism, a popular movement began to stir on the internet. “We might as well,” came the rallying cry, “call them the CHO [China Health Organisation] at this point.” 

Within days, the Taiwan Can Help movement had raised almost $1 million from 27,000 donors. Its figurehead, English language education YouTuber Ray Du, described the outpouring of funds as an outpouring of feeling - “the eternally quiet calling out” less with anger than simply the desire to be heard. 

The Taiwanese identity - particularly the Taiwanese democratic identity - is young and therefore fragile. Many millennials struggle with self-identification, especially as their parents and grandparents feel simply “Chinese”. As democracy finds its footing so close to an autocratic powerhouse once and potentially still the “motherland” of that democracy, actualising a new nationalism is not a straightforward process. As 2020 results for Chengchi University’s yearly National Identification polls demonstrated, the “Taiwanese” identity has finally come to predominate on the island, but what that means and how that identity defines itself is very much still in the process of formulation. 

Therefore it was no accident that Taiwan Can Help took YouTubers and social media stars as its proponents and figureheads: the YouTuber is a phenomenon only possible in Washington’s “free world”. In mainland China, where homegrown social media platforms are dominant and Google products inaccessible without the use of a VPN, it’s almost impossible to make a living from AdSense alone. Internet creators like Ray Du and Chang Chih-chyi are not simply representative of Taiwan’s alliance with the democratic powers - their very existence is predicated on it. Such visible beacons of “difference” call strongly to those struggling with self identity - this is Taiwan, they came together to shout: WHO can’t help! We can.

Was their shout for attention successful? The full page ad ran in the New York Times on April 10 and probably caused many readers to stop for a second between pages. With only a fraction of the NT$20,000,000 raised spent on that publication, graphic designer and project head Aaron Nieh posted on Facebook to announce where the remaining funds would go: 31.97 per cent towards domestic medical supplies, 22.20 per cent to foreign markets and 45.82 per cent on internet-based promotion.

Print advertising was indeed followed with a social media drive eventually seen by over 100 million people in most major languages in use on YouTube. Analysis after the campaign found that the New York Times ad drove 130,500 independent searches for information on Taiwan and its exclusion from the WHO, but tracing the effectiveness of the subsequent new media  advertising is more difficult. Most videos certainly pushed good numbers, but little beyond click-rates common for any given creator. 

Even if Taiwan Can Help failed to tap into an international zeitgeist, its plucky cry in the face of injustice can safely be added to the list history keeps of steps taken on the way to becoming a nation.

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