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China's dishonesty and incompetence in dealing with SARS and avian flu means it is critical that Taiwan join the World Health Organization
David Harris, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, May 11, 2007TAIPEI - Between SARS and avian flu, Canada has a major health stake in Taiwan's bid for membership in the World Health Organization (WHO). So Canadians should be deeply troubled by mounting evidence that Communist China is undermining the Taiwan initiative in ways that politicize the WHO and endanger international health systems and governance.
On April 12, Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian announced his country's intention to seek full membership in the World Health Organization, under the name of Taiwan. This news should be a source of relief to a region -- and world -- recently brutalized by SARS and avian flu, and now awaiting promised pandemics.
By itself, democratic Taiwan has excellent health-management systems, including unsurpassed negative pressure quarantine hospital wards and the world-class National Health Research Institute run by a Canadian-trained physician. But Taiwan risks being a transshipment point for international disease, thanks largely to its proximity to South China.
View Larger ImageChina / City officials clean a street in Guangzhou, China, in early 2004 in a bid to control a new strain of the SARS virus. China lied to the world about its key role in the 2003 SARS epidemic that killed 44 Canadians. The reality of aviation migration routes, smuggling and immigration patterns means that Canada should support Taiwan's bid to become a member of the World Health Organization to protect both countries from such outbreaks.
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Printer friendlyRecent epidemics saw Chinese Communist Party mismanagement and coverups in South China turning the region into a SARS and bird-plague Petri dish. This was the predictable result of China's policy of denial of epidemics, isolation of affected villages, and letting the sick simply die off. (In an archetypal example of totalitarian spin, China strikes AIDS-affected villages from official maps on the apparent theory that a village erased is a public-health embarrassment avoided.)
By the time its SARS affliction was finally exposed, even secretive China had to apologize to the international community for hiding its part in launching the disaster -- though a little late for 44 dead Canadians. In a typically graceless follow-up, China's Communist Party had its Supreme Court threaten to execute anyone breaching quarantine.
Avian migration routes, smuggling and millions of travellers between China and Taiwan combine with Canada's vast immigration numbers to ensure that what goes on in Taiwan and its neighbourhood will be at home in Toronto and Vancouver just hours later. Hence the need to bring Taiwan fully into the WHO fold, to share and benefit from state-of-the-art research, disease prevention, control and epidemiology-based warnings.
Unfortunately, this kind of common sense overlooks political gamesmanship. Under its notorious "One China" policy, Beijing is still driven by a fierce, Cold War insistence that democratic Taiwan have no standing in the international community. So China has pressured and lobbied -- and now, allegedly, subverted -- WHO and the best interests of world health in order to block meaningful Taipei-WHO engagement.
What has this meant for Taiwan and us?
To date, Taiwan has been restricted to merely "meaningful participation" status at WHO. This status has proved a fraud, because its ambiguity has enabled the People's Republic of China (PRC), claiming to speak for Taiwan, to define in absurdly narrow terms what "meaningful participation" for the island really means.
Under this "participation" regime, bona fide health concerns finish a distant second. Taiwan only gets to attend important World Health Assembly or technical conferences by making a special application and giving five weeks' notice. This is a remarkable requirement, given the past rates of disease propagation. Indeed, it can be a nonstarter if visa deadlines intervene -- which they are likely to do if entrenched Chinese influences in WHO's management and bureaucracy delay application processing. And assuming Taiwan gets permission, its level of participation is restricted and its representative must be accompanied by a PRC "minder." Neither is Taiwan allowed to use its own name for these purposes.
Result of this approach? During the 2003 SARS epidemic, Taiwan scientists were forced to make desperate searches online for information that WHO refused to provide, even as the contagion was spreading as far afield as Toronto. At the same time, China claimed it was looking after Taiwan's needs-- "a shameless lie," according to Taiwan. Conclusion: China-driven WHO practices endanger world health. The 23 million people of Taiwan were effectively robbed of their right under the United Nations Charter, the WHO constitution and international humanitarian law to reasonable health for all people.
But easily as disturbing as any of this is the mysterious way in which some of these Taiwan restrictions came to be imposed in the name of the World Health Organization.
Various sources, including remarks attributed to China's health minister, suggest that WHO's restricted relationship with Taiwan is based on a memorandum of understanding that was secretly signed between China and the WHO secretariat. Contrary to the spirit of transparency, the contents of this agreement have never been fully revealed, but observers have few doubts about its existence and implications for WHO's integrity and international disease control.
Meanwhile, hard questions are being asked about a senior secretariat official's role in accepting the agreement, together with the official's connection to Hong Kong and alleged involvement as a PRC official in past disease cover-ups in South China.
As a respected member of the World Health Organization, Canada must support Taiwan's application for full WHO membership. Canada must also play a role in resolving outstanding questions about transparency and accountability in the WHO secretariat to ensure due process is respected. World health is too important to be dictated by political agendas.
David Harris is a lawyer and senior fellow for national security with the Canadian Coalition for Democracies (www.canadiancoalition.com). He is concluding a CCD fact-finding mission to Asia, focusing on Taiwan's WHO application.
