14/05/2026
Here is a piece from the TSCS Team on an issue of shared concern. We welcome your feedback, reactions, and comments.
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Taiwan's “meaningful participation” in the WHO is a global interest. But the organization still excludes Taipei because of Chinese pressure.
For the tenth consecutive year, observers from Taiwan will not attend the proceedings of the World Health Assembly (WHA), the decision-making body of the World Health Organization (WHO), scheduled to take place in Geneva from May 18 to 23. The Secretariat’s decision not to invite officials and experts from Taipei to participate in any capacity in the activities of one of the United Nations’ principal specialized agencies reflects Beijing’s efforts to isolate Taiwan from the international community.
For years, the People’s Republic of China has pursued a campaign aimed at systematically distorting both the wording and the meaning of United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758, under which the government in Beijing has been recognized since October 25, 1971, as the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people. Although the resolution leaves Taiwan’s status undefined, Beijing insists on an interpretation according to which there is no place for Taiwan within the United Nations system, since Taiwan is part of China and therefore represented by it. In reality, however, the United Nations has never ruled on Taiwan’s status as part of the People’s Republic of China—a claim that Beijing continues to advance solely on the basis of a principle of its foreign policy, the well-known “One China principle,” which has increasingly been overtaken by the historical developments of the past three decades. It is clear to anyone familiar with international politics that, since Taiwan’s transition to democracy, the government in Taipei has never challenged the legitimacy of the People’s Republic of China, thereby effectively setting aside an international dispute inherited from the Cold War.
Circumstances change and international politics evolve—as is only natural—but Beijing remains anchored to a nationalist vision that finds little basis in either history or international law and is instead rooted in traditional power politics. History shows that, over the past 130 years, Taiwan has followed a trajectory distinct from that of China; international law, meanwhile, indicates that Taiwan does possess all the attributes of statehood, including a permanent population, a defined territory, a government, and the capacity to enter into relations with other states. Beijing rejects both of these realities in the name of what it considers the overriding national interest of reunification with the “renegade province.”
The People’s Republic routinely denounces alleged interference in its internal affairs whenever the “Taiwan issue” enters public debate, even in contexts where it is evident that the international community has a shared interest in addressing problems as broadly and collectively as possible. Taiwan’s exclusion from next week’s World Health Assembly in Geneva effectively illustrates the implications of Chinese political pressure on the activities of United Nations specialized agencies.
The People’s Republic has represented China within the WHO since 1972. From that point onward, Taiwan was excluded from the organization, with no alternative arrangements for participation, particularly as an observer at the World Health Assembly. The consequences of this exclusion have at times been significant. During the SARS outbreak in Southeast Asia in 2003, for example, experts from Taipei—despite having developed effective public health protocols—were excluded from regional coordination efforts aimed at containing the spread of the disease. It was likely in response to these developments that, in 2005, the WHO Secretariat and the Beijing authorities signed a memorandum of understanding containing “exceptional arrangements” for the participation of Taiwanese experts in the organization’s investigative and assistance activities. In practice, the WHO agreed that Taiwan’s involvement—including participation in technical meetings and conferences—would take place only with prior approval from China’s Ministry of Health, granted on a case-by-case basis and on the condition that experts from Taipei were designated as part of the “Taiwan, China” delegation. On the one hand, the 2005 compromise represented an opening that improved the flow of information and helped mitigate risks; on the other, it gave Beijing leverage over WHO procedures and strengthened the presence of the “One China principle” within the organization.
It is therefore no coincidence that, in the following years, Taiwan was invited—as “Chinese Taipei”—to observe the World Health Assembly only between 2009 and 2016, during the presidency of Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang, the party most open to discussing “peaceful reunification” with Beijing.
The extent to which Beijing’s political pressure on the WHO can affect the timely management of global challenges became starkly evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. The first warnings about the emergence in Wuhan of a form of viral pneumonia and the possibility of human-to-human transmission came from Taiwan at the end of December 2019. However, at that time, experts from Taipei were excluded from the WHO as a result of Beijing’s retaliation against the administration of President Tsai Ing-wen, a member of the Democratic Progressive Party, who had explicitly refused to endorse the “One China principle.” For Tsai, accepting that formula—namely, that there is only one China and Taiwan is part of it—would have risked undermining the achievements of Taiwan’s democratic system in any future negotiations.
It is now widely recognized that the lack of effective communication between Taipei and Geneva delayed the WHO’s declaration of a public health emergency of international concern by one month. Until January 30, 2020, relying on Beijing’s assurances that it could contain the outbreak, the WHO refrained from taking action. Moreover, the absence of Taiwanese delegates in Geneva likely prevented the sharing of best practices in pandemic management that Taipei’s experts had already begun developing as early as January 2020. As evidence of the effectiveness of Taiwan’s containment strategy, it is worth noting that, one year after the start of the pandemic, Taiwan had recorded only 911 COVID-19 cases and just 8 deaths.
Ultimately, setting aside the political issue of Taiwan’s status, recent history shows that it is in the interest of the international community to involve all relevant actors in the management of global emergencies—whether health-related or otherwise—and in the development of effective policies. Observer participation in the Geneva Assembly does not require statehood and does not imply admission to the United Nations. Such status is granted, for example, to non-governmental organizations, while the Holy See, although not a UN member state, has enjoyed permanent observer status since 2021. It should therefore not be regarded as a politically sensitive issue, not even for Beijing. In light of these considerations, the Taipei government’s request for “meaningful participation” in WHO activities should be assessed solely in terms of global public health interests, the need to protect Taiwan’s population, and the benefits to the international health system in terms of knowledge-sharing and best practices. It is a reasonable and responsible request and should therefore be supported in a spirit of cooperation and in the interest of the well-being of populations.
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