Despite Covid-19 Success, Taiwan Still Struggles for International Legitimacy > Articles | - 0 views
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No one understands the CCP better than Taipei. Simply put, Taiwan operates on the premise that its cross-strait counterparts are inherently untrustworthy. This was a key factor in the rapidity and comprehensiveness with which Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s administration responded to reports of a strange new virus in late December.
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The system of integrated rapid-response agencies behind Taiwan’s successful handling of Covid-19 emerged — at least partly — in response to Bejing’s attempts to prevent Taiwan attaining observer status at the WHO’s annual World Health Assembly (WHA), beginning in the late 1990s.
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“The Chen administration, in order to improve its prospects of re-election in 2004, deliberately utilized the threat posed by the SARS pandemic to appeal to Taiwanese identity,” writes Björn Alexander Lindemann in a 2014 case study of Taiwan’s WHO bid. “The mobilization of the Taiwanese population during the SARS crisis indeed benefitted the DPP government in the 2004 elections [as] public discourse shifted... to the consequences of SARS and the threat that China posed to Taiwan’s security in the run-up to the presidential elections. People were left with the impression that the island had been left on its own and were thus susceptible to the government’s efforts to appeal to Taiwanese identity and nationalist sentiments.”1
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“doctors in the hospital did not identify the first SARS case immediately, because not all the criteria for the identification of SARS that had been defined by the WHO had been made available to Taiwan: unaware that the WHO was going to revise these particular criteria very soon, the medical personnel did not classify the patient as a SARS case and thus did not institute sufficient measures to prevent the spread of the virus right from the beginning.” Lindemann adds that, although it was not the only reason for Taiwan’s inadequate reaction to the SARS outbreak, government officials claimed that the lack of WHO assistance “made a bad situation worse.”