"If Taiwan falls, who is next?...The world must not ignore China's threat to Taiwan," says Taiwan's Foreign Minister Jaushieh Joseph Wu of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ROC（Taiwan） in The Times' Thunderer on 11 June.
Minister Wu’s full article:
The world must not ignore China’s threats to Taiwan
If Taiwan falls, who is next? China is spreading its influence throughout the world with the ambition to dominate in a new world order. It is militarising the South China Sea, enticing smaller countries into debt traps through its Belt and Road initiative, making overblown promises of financial assistance it doesn’t keep.
It is taking advantage of the openness of democratic societies around the world to influence and infiltrate them. Its bullying — fake news, computer hacking, bribery, economic coercion, technology theft, intrusion in internal politics — is at work everywhere. Hong Kong, where more than a million people protested against a proposed extradition law on Sunday, serves as another warning of China’s constant desire to interfere and suppress democracy.
While the People’s Republic of China insists the world accept its “one China principle”, most countries have their own policies for Taiwan and China that are different from the Chinese position. The PRC also intimidates transnational companies, such as British Airways, into listing Taiwan as a Chinese province.
The truth is that Taiwan is a sovereign democratic state. It is not part of the PRC and never has been. We elect our president and legislators, have our own armed forces, issue passports and visas, and conduct independent relations with other countries. Taiwanese enjoy all kinds of freedoms: speech, press, assembly, religion, political participation, the rule of law and, since May, same-sex marriage. Taiwan is also an economic powerhouse, ranked in the top 20 world trading nations; a high-tech hub for semiconductors and information and communications technology; a global leader in healthcare.
All of this is very inconvenient for China, which wants to annex Taiwan and destroy our democracy. It has declared that it will not exclude the use of force to “unify” us, although the great majority of Taiwanese have zero interest in being part of a police state that monitors its citizens with social credit surveillance, puts Uighurs in mass internment camps, suppresses religion and dissent in Tibet, throws human rights lawyers in jail and limits access to the internet.
China interferes with Taiwan’s international participation at every chance: it targets our government with up to 360 million cyberattacks a year and runs a major disinformation campaign to manipulate public opinion and destabilise our system. The energy of Taiwan’s 23 million people, their expertise and resources, their resilience and determination, are a unique and vital world asset. Taiwan is proud to be a successful democratic story; we deserve the support of like-minded countries.
Jaushieh Joseph Wu is Taiwan’s minister of foreign affairs
