Taiwan has become more and more vocal in recent days about its exclusion from World Health Organization meetings.
It comes as the world grapples to contain the growing number of new coronavirus cases that has killed more than 560 people worldwide, most of whom died in China.
Due to Beijing’s objections, Taiwan has been denied membership to most international organizations including the WHO — a United Nations agency. Beijing considers Taiwan as part of its territory that must one day be reunified with the mainland and should have no right to participate in international diplomacy.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Joanne Ou, on Thursday slammed China and the WHO for providing wrong information about the number of coronavirus cases in Taiwan. The World Health Organization reported Tuesday that the island had 13 cases, when there were only 10 at that time.
Ou blamed Beijing for the error. “This was wrong information that was provided by China which created the mistake,” she said.
Taiwan currently has 13 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus outbreak, believed to have originated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in province of Hubei. There are more than 28,000 infected people in mainland China alone, and all but two who have died were in China.
In my opinion, I think that China should have no right to exclude Taiwan from the WHO meetings since Taiwan (Republic of China) has acted as its own state since 1912. Since 1949, all the refugees from mainland China that did not support the communist party fled to the island of Taiwan. Since then, mainland China has not annexed Taiwan but it is attempting to. I also think it is not fair that Taiwan cannot participate in the WHO meetings as it would be important for Taiwan since they now have 13 confirmed cases. But obviously China will vote against it because if Taiwan were to join as Taiwan, it would show sovereignty.