West must stand up for Taiwan

At its best, the Olympics is far more than a grandiose jamboree of world sport. As overweening bullies and dictators, from Adolf Hitler to Communist China, have learned to their cost, sporting success for the oppressed can deliver a salutary lesson and inspire the downtrodden to defiance. When Jesse Owens took four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, a meet that Nazi Germany fondly imagined would prove a Teutonic triumph, Hitler famously stalked out of the stadium in disgust. Eightyfive years later in Tokyo, the heroic feats of Hong Kong and Taiwan yield equally exhilarating moments.

Last week, swimmer Siobhan Haughey took two silver medals to become Hong Kong’s most decorated Olympian of all time. Haughey’s own teammates had selflessly forfeited their group relay to allow her to focus on her individual events. As fencer Edgar Cheung took gold — Hong Kong’s first since its handover to China in 1997 — crowds across the city erupted in joy. While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tightens its grip, sporting success has triggered a rare moment of collective joy, all the more poignant due to what’s happening alongside it.

Last week saw the first conviction of a protester under Hong Kong’s draconian national security law. The trial, under a legal system that shares many of the trappings of Britain’s, was an eerie sight. Judges, though clad in similar regalia to their British counterparts, presided over a jury-less sham trial in a terrible travesty of even-handed law and order.

Now Hong Kong authorities are believed to be investigating reports that China’s national anthem was booed during a television broadcast of Edgar Cheung’s medal ceremony.

Taiwan is also enjoying its best-ever medal haul in Tokyo. Its badminton pair, Lee Yang and Wang Chi-lin, beat a Chinese team to claim gold in the men’s final last Saturday, an extraordinary coup given China’s historic dominance.

In a Facebook post, Lee dedicated his medal “to my country — Taiwan,” prompting fury from CCP trolls online. China’s state media reportedly cut off broadcasts of the medal ceremony halfway through.

All of this success is proving, well, triggering. The CCP wants to invade Taiwan, and doesn’t like people calling it an independent country. At the Olympics, they are forced to go by “Chinese Taipei,” an absurd term foisted on Taiwanese athletes 40 years ago by the International Olympic Committee to make their participation acceptable to Beijing. Global media outlets often repeat this problematic “house style” without question.

Like modern-day social justice warriors, CCP insiders specialize in feigning victimhood over trivial things. They fumed when an American channel broadcast an “incomplete” map of China (with Taiwan missing) during the opening ceremony. For a supposedly “strong” country, they sure do get offended easily, and yet their performative offence is invariably accompanied by brute force.

Taiwan has always been a focal point for Chinese expansionism but the CCP has stepped up its military harassment dramatically this year, flying jets and bombers into Taiwanese airspace, including a record 28 fighters on one day in June. In recent Pentagon war-game scenarios involving a CCP invasion of Taiwan, the United States military “failed miserably,” as one high-ranking army official admitted last month.

All of this leads to a depressing question. What, if anything, can be done? Britain has hardly shirked its duty to Hong Kong, offering millions a path to U.K. citizenship and granting political asylum to democracy activists. However, we can surely do more to welcome Hong Kongers, and give Taiwan a proper role in the global community. This would involve recognizing Taiwan for what it is: An independent democracy, which has no wish to be absorbed into China.

Crucially, Taiwan has been forward-thinking throughout the pandemic. In December 2019, Taiwanese officials warned the World Health Organization about the risk of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19. Yet the WHO, fatally in hoc to China, failed to alert the world. Taiwan’s exclusion from international forums has tragic consequences for us all. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. Yet, save for the interventions of a handful of “China hawks,” many politicians appear insufficiently curious about both the origins of the virus, and how it initially spread. Too busy blaming ourselves perhaps, we have failed to assign responsibility. Soon, Western nations will begin their own inquiries into their handling of the pandemic, hoping to learn lessons on how best to weather the next storm. That should begin by welcoming Taiwan and Taiwanese expertise.

Chinese aggression can simply be explained as the classic bully’s overreach. But there is also a perverse logic to it. Taiwan (and Hong Kong, as it used to be) do represent an existential threat to the CCP regime — proving through their very existence that people of Chinese descent don’t need authoritarianism to flourish. Their Olympians bring hope to their countrymen but they should also remind us of our negligence.

AT THE OLYMPICS, THEY ARE FORCED TO GO BY CHINESE TAIPEI ...