Commentary

Only 12 countries are left in the world that recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty. Eswatini, a small country of 1.3 million people in southern Africa, is one of them. It was previously known as Swaziland.

When Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te sought to fly there for a long April 22–26 visit, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took action. Beijing reportedly contacted Indian Ocean nations along Lai’s flight path to Eswatini to demand that their already confirmed overflight permissions be canceled.

The regime in Beijing imposed intense pressure on these countries with threats of economic sanctions, including the cancellation of debt relief. In response, Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar buckled and canceled Lai’s overflight approvals at the last minute. Taiwan called the cancellations a form of “servitude” to China.

The airspace blockages forced Lai to cancel his trip to Eswatini on safety grounds. The U.S. State Department spokesman noted to Reuters on April 22 that “These countries are acting at the behest of China by interfering in the safety and dignity of routine travel by Taiwan officials.”

The cancellation highlights servitude to China in not only Seychelles, Mauritius, and Madagascar, but also in international organizations and major G7 economies. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which is part of the United Nations system of international organizations, should protect the flight safety of elected leaders of sovereign countries like Taiwan. Yet, not only did ICAO not protect Lai, but democratic Taiwan is not allowed membership in the organization where authoritarian countries like China have a seat.

The United States is the only major power that supports Taiwan’s inclusion in the ICAO. This illustrates the astonishing power of Beijing’s global influence and a mismatch between the executive and legislative branches of many G7 democracies, including the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy. In these five countries, the legislatures have voted for Taiwan’s admission to ICAO, but their executives have not endorsed the position. In Japan, neither the executives nor the legislature has endorsed the position, showing a concerning amount of CCP influence that gets all the way down to the legislative level.

That the United Kingdom was, until recently, thinking of giving the strategic Chagos Islands, including a joint U.S.–UK military base, to Mauritius shows the self-defeating nature of allowing the CCP to influence our democracies. Mauritius has extensive commercial and government relations with Beijing, and has allowed approximately 6,000 of its officials to be “trained” in China. Many of them were likely recruited into China’s intelligence services.

The CCP’s global influence stems from its gatekeeper status over the 1.4 billion Chinese citizens, and the influence this provides over major corporations with political influence in almost all countries. The CCP’s control over the Chinese population was taken through force in 1949 and never legitimized through free elections. This makes the CCP’s continued control over China and its global influence illegitimate.

The next time Beijing tries to stop the flight of an official from a democratic country like Taiwan, the U.S. Air Force could provide a fighter jet escort for the official through the airspace of countries that are being intimidated by the CCP. They should prefer this to being leveraged by Beijing yet again. It would improve the global influence of the democracies and Taiwan’s diplomacy, and so prospects for the eventual democratization of mainland China. That would remove the root cause of many of the world’s current problems.

Taiwan should be admitted not only to ICAO, to help ensure the safety of all of our elected officials as they travel internationally, but to all U.N. institutions. The United Nations was founded with the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) in mind, which requires countries to honor basic democratic principles such as elections and freedom of speech. China has neither of these, and so should be ejected from the United Nations. It cannot pick and choose which U.N. principles to follow.

Taiwan has both elections and freedom of speech, so it should be readmitted to the United Nations and all U.N. organizations. Washington could address Beijing’s violation of international law by canceling the visas of China’s U.N. diplomats and recognizing Taiwan’s sovereignty. The elected officials of Taiwan have far more legitimacy than the CCP dictator, and it is about time for Washington to rectify this inconsistency between American values and American action when it comes to East Asia. It may cost some trade with China, but it would be well worth the benefits for democracy and America’s long-term national security.

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