The World Health Assembly will open this year’s session at Geneva today. Taiwan is trying to accede to the World Health Organization as a full-fledged member, and its application is expected to be discussed on the opening day. Its rejection of the application is a foregone conclusion.
But Taiwan continued to lobby. It sent delegation after delegation abroad to try to persuade whatever countries that may choose to listen. President Chen Shui-bian held a costly international news conference via satellite video on Friday to tell the world why Taiwan wants to become a member of the World Health Organization. One day later, on Saturday, the Department of Health sponsored two “walks” of supporters, one in Taipei and the other in Kaohsiung, to advance Taiwan’s bid to rejoin the world organization from which it was ousted as the Republic of China in 1971.
All these activities were futile, of course. The futility was accentuated by the U.S. refusal to receive a lobbying delegation led by Joanne J. L. Chang, deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council who served at one time as Taipei deputy representative in Washington. A State Department spokesman said there’s no need for any more explanation of Taiwan’s position, because it is already fully understood. It is, indeed. As a matter of fact, Washington had earlier stated that it does not support Taiwan’s bid to become a full member of the World Health Organization, albeit it has supported participation as an observer in the last couple of years. The reason is simple: WHO membership is awarded only to United Nations member states. The Republic of China on Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations in 1971, shortly before its concomitant ouster from the Geneva-based world body.
Everybody knows it’s not just unfair but wrong to keep Taiwan out of the World Health Organization. China doesn’t want Taiwan to join, and practically the whole world has to go along with Beijing. That’s world politics at its worst, but that’s the way it is. Nobody can do anything to change that in any foreseeable future. There is no need whatsoever for trying to make the world or our own people any better aware of the international injustice Taiwan is suffering.
Taiwan has been knocking at the door of the World Health Organization for ten years. That’s an exercise in futility. But such exercises repeated constitute a stupidity. Private, non-profit organizations or wealthy public-minded individuals are encouraged to finance the lobbying. But the government should have called a halt to its public-financed campaign. Instead, it has continued to require taxpayers to pay for its stupidity.
（本文刊載於96.05.14 China Post第4版，本文代表作者個人意見）
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