The Far-Eastern Sweet Potato

Foreign nationals threatened

In a short opinion piece published today in the Taipei Times, I argue that China's insistence that health-related information from the World Health Organization (WHO) and its subsidiary agencies be relayed to Taipei via Beijing rather than directly from the WHO to Taiwan represents a threat not only to the 23 million Taiwanese whose safety, as recent events have shown, could be compromised, but also to the tens of thousands of expatriates who live in Taiwan. By giving Beijing control over health information, I argue, the WHO would simply be giving China an additional tool with which to blackmail Taiwan.

My piece is a call on foreign governments to let Beijing know, in no uncertain terms, that hostage-taking of expatriates in Taiwan — as the willful or neglectful withholding of health-related information or the failure to disseminate it in a responsible and timely fashion certainly represent — is unacceptable behavior.

Readers can read the full article by clicking here.