Link to article: https://apnews.com/article/taiwan-czech-visit-china-protests-5bb6e53d08f135342a8d7065ee3ac455
Taiwan’s former leader Tsai Ing-wen plans to visit European states this upcoming week. These states include the Czech Republic and predictedly France, Vatican City, and Belgium. Taiwan is a non-recognized state with 50% of the population desiring independence. They are also technically appart of the state of China, so these new diplomatic relations Taiwan is forming with some of China’s diplomatic partners is provoking China. China has worked hard to shut Taiwan out from any diplomatic activities but Taiwan states that participation in these international institutions is a key priority to them. Beijing, China’s capitol, has now demanded that Taipei, Taiwan’s capitol, recognizes their sovereignty over them. Beijing has also requested that the Czech republic and other relevant countries, “respect China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
This tour seems to be an advancement to further recognition of Taiwan, which also would mean Taiwan is a step closer to statehood, although China does hold veto power within the UN, so it is unlikely that they would ever reach full statehood. This event may also weaken Chinese ties in some Europe states, seeing as China was angered with the Czech Republic and the other countries who could possibly be meeting with Taiwan whom they still currently hold sovereignty over. China and the European Union’s relationship has become a bit rocky as the EU has growing fears that Beijing could blackmail them by exploiting their states’ critical materials dependencies. The EU therefore has been implementing tariffs on Chinese goods, to try and wane off of Chinese material reliance. This event has definitely been no aid to the growing tensions between the two.
Taiwan also contains a lot of valuable materials, since they are located next to China they have most of the same resources. They also are responsible for a large amount of production of the worlds most advanced semiconductor chips. The reason for Europe’s growing Taiwanese connections could be due to their growing independence from Chinese materials. They could be attempting to fill their lack of natural resources with materials from a less lethal country. By looking for a new and safer country to potentially conduct trading with, these European states are acting in their own national interests, which, as we have been talking about in class, is the most common driving force of international relations.