1

Cross Strait Relations and International Organizations: Taiwan’s Participation in IGOS in the Context of Its Relationship with China (Springer VS: Wiesbaden, Germany, 2014), pp. 208-9.

Ibid., p. 204.

Over the last two-plus decades, Taipei has repeatedly broadcast examples of the threat that the Chinese Communist Party poses to health and safety on an international level. Politically motivated as these admonishments have often been, they have also coincided with altruistic principles.

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.”

taipei’s protests over this, and the sars crisis in general, became focal points in its public relations campaign for WHO admission. Moral outrage dovetailed with the functional approach, premised on the argument that by leaving taiwan out in the cold the WHO was creating a gaping gap in the international healthcare network. By aiming to capture both minds and hearts, taipei hoped to gain increased visibility.

Healthcare was seen as the perfect arena for such a two-pronged campaign because it naturally lent itself to both strategies. In her 2014 paper on taiwan’s participation in intergovernmental

organizations (IGOS), sigrid Winkler compares the WHO bid under chen’s successor, the Kmt’s Ma Ying-jeou, to the campaign for access to the International civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the united Nations framework convention on climate change (unfccc). “In comparison to the ICAO and unfccc bids, taiwan’s starting point had been more favorable in the case of the WHO,” Winkler writes. “the sars crisis had proven that taiwan could benefit from better access to the WHO and that, conversely, taiwan’s exclusion created a health risk for the rest of the world. such arguments are harder to make when air travel and climate change are considered ...”

3

In April 2009, taiwan received an invitation to participate in the WHA as an observer. this followed an announcement in January that same year that taiwan would be included in the WHO’S International Health Regulations (IHR). On the face of it, these developments were cause for celebration — the culmination of years of diplomatic maneuvering to come to a mutually acceptable arrangement with Beijing. Involve