The 74th World Health Assembly (WHA) kicked off on Monday and has decided not to invite the island of Taiwan as an observer to attend the assembly, which has been proposed by some countries. For the fifth year in a row, the WHA objected the Taiwan-related proposal. Thirteen countries that maintain the so-called diplomatic relations with the island submitted abovementioned proposal. It concluded that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) authorities have lost their shirts like previous years, maybe even worse. The DPP authorities have recently been stressing that international support for Taiwan’s participation in the WHA this year is historically high, making every effort to create momentum for its return to the WHA this year. What they referred to is the joint statement supporting Taiwan’s attendance released by top diplomats of the G7 countries and of some members of parliament of Western countries early this month. But who is the real international community? Since the US and several other Western powers control the world’s major public opinion institutions, can they pretend to be the international community just by speaking jointly with their allies and through small clique multilateral mechanisms? They can verify it in UN institutions. In the WHA, where every country has one vote, those Western countries, plus the countries which have so-called “diplomatic relations” with Taiwan are clearly the absolute minority. The G7 countries declared their support for Taiwan’s participation in the WHA, but none of them dared to propose it to the assembly. It is because they know that the vast majority of the 194 members of the WHO support the one-China principle. They cannot break through this international consensus. The only result for their participation in the proposal is humiliating. Therefore, they only paid lip service, but none of them dare to put it into practice. They left this humiliating task to Taiwan’s 13 “diplomatic allies.”In fact, the bigger the drama over Taiwan’s participation in the WHA is, the more it finally proves how overwhelming the vast majority of the global community supports the one-China principle and how isolated the G7 countries are in supporting Taiwan. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, this year, more than 150 countries have expressed support for Beijing’s decision to oppose Taiwan’s participation in the WHA through diplomatic channels. Over 80 WHO members sent letters to the WHO to express their commitment to the one-China principle and their opposition to the island’s participation in the WHA. So even if there is going to be a vote, the G7 plus Taiwan’s 13 “diplomatic allies” will have no chance to win. The WHA issue is just another example of how the West attacks China in the name of the world and then receives a smack in the face by the global community. The US has repeatedly solidified different voices in the West to pressure China over the so-called human rights issues in Xinjiang and Hong Kong. –GT
