On the eve of the next meeting of the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), which opens on Wednesday in Montreal, and of the General Assembly of this organization which will be held there at the end of September, Taiwan reiterates his call to finally regain his place within this international structure responsible for supervising and ensuring the safety of air transport throughout the world.
A participation that is becoming more and more “crucial”, considers the head of Taiwanese diplomacy, Joseph Wu, in an interview granted a few days ago to the To have tofor the Asian island whose autonomy and especially democracy are increasingly threatened by the Chinese government of Xi Jinping.
“Taiwan has an independent civil aviation which should be represented at ICAO. It’s a question of security, drops Mr. Wu, sitting in one of the protocol lounges of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Taipei. However, China has registered our airports as well as our ports in international organizations where its influence is growing, in order to seize Taiwan’s sovereignty over these strategic issues. And it could be catastrophic, if something dramatic were to happen. »
Beijing has stepped up its military maneuvers over the Formosa Strait this summer and hardened its bellicose rhetoric against this territory, autonomous since 1949, which China wants to bring back into its fold.
With the prospect of suffering the same fate as Ukraine, by enduring an increasingly probable Chinese invasion, Taiwan is therefore seeking to stimulate its international support in order to be able to carry its own voice within several international bodies, including ICAO. Since 1974, the government of Beijing has ensured the official representation of the island.
In this context, the four Taiwanese airlines are thus registered as originating from “Taiwan, province of China”, even if their operation and legal structures are independent of the People’s Republic of China. For ICAO, flights between the island and mainland China are also considered domestic flights. A “fiction”, according to the Taiwanese government, which is inevitably becoming more and more problematic, six months after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia under the pretext of a resumption of sovereignty over Ukrainian territory, according to the Moscow speech .
Since February 24 [soit le début de la guerre en Ukraine], the international community and the democracies of the world understood that Taiwan was also threatened by the expansion of authoritarianism, says Joseph Wu. The first invasion of Crimea, in 2014, made us realize, globally, that we We had not been sufficiently mobilized to counter this Russian aggression and prevent it from going further. Attention has now turned a little more towards us. And in this context, we now see more countries ready to speak out in defense of Taiwan, to maintain peace in the region and to demand Taiwan’s participation and place in international organizations. Canada is one of them. And it is a very appreciated support. »
In 2019, the last pre-pandemic year, so before the upheaval in international trade, more than 1.5 million planes passed through Taiwan’s air protection zone, carrying no less than 72 million passengers. “Taiwan’s voice within ICAO is therefore very important for the safety of these individuals,” Wu said.
A question of “security”
Ironically, China, then represented by the democratic and anti-communist government of Chiang Kai-shek, was one of the founding members of this international organization in 1944. In 1949, the victory of the communists forced its withdrawal and that of the Republic of China, which he represented, on the island of Taiwan, which then became an autonomous territory and a flourishing democracy thereafter. For two decades, it was finally Taiwan that represented the People’s Republic of China, communist, within this organization – just like within the UN, until 1971. It was in the context of the cold war .
In 2019, the G7 Foreign Ministers supported in a joint statement “the substantial participation of all active members of the international aviation community in ICAO forums”, recalling that “the exclusion of some of its members from political purposes”, to which Taiwan is subject, “compromises aviation safety and security. At the time, however, the organization did not offer an attentive ear to this request, due to the barriers imposed by the General Secretariat of the ICAO, then in the hands of the Chinese Fang Liu. The context has just changed in part, the organization now being led, since August 2021, by the Colombian Juan Carlos Salazar.
Despite Taiwan’s status as a democratic sovereign state, the lack of international recognition of this status — barely 13 out of 193 UN member states have official international relations with the island — would not allow it to get off the hook. than an observer position within ICAO.
However, by its GDP per capita, Taiwan ranks 15e rank of world economies. Moreover, with a population of 24 million, the territory is more populated than 70% of ICAO member countries.
“Chinese influence in international organizations has increased in recent years, particularly through the general secretariats,” deplores the head of Taiwanese diplomacy. Within the UN and several other international organizations, there is now a disproportionately high number, proportionally, of Chinese executives and employees. Beijing has appropriated these bodies to install its standards and its agendas. Taiwan pays the price. It is also becoming increasingly worrying for democratic regimes, who wonder how to counter this influence. Because these bodies should be the first to ensure respect for the rules of the world order”, rather than contributing to disorder, he concludes.
With the collaboration
by Alisa Chih Yun Chen
This report was funded with support from the Journalism Fund
international Transat-The duty.