MEDIA SPOTLIGHT – One country may emerge from Covid-19 stronger than before.  A Quartz article suggests Taiwan may gain from the pandemic.

“Taiwan responded quickly to the outbreak and appears to have limited it spread,” the Quartz article by Annabelle Timsit said.  “Its government leveraged technology to trace and quarantine sick people, upped its mask production, and trained communities for lockdowns through large-scale simulations.”

The island of Taiwan, which is about 100 miles from mainland China, had reported only 440 cases of Covid-19 and just seven deaths.  In contrast, Australia with a similar population had 6,948 cases and 97 deaths.

“The world noticed,” Timsit wrote.  “Taiwan’s effective pandemic response won it international support, which may help further its decades-long quest to be included in international institutions like the UN and its various agencies, especially the World Health Organization.”

“There’s absolutely no doubt that this has been a strategic opportunity for Taiwan,” J. Michael Cole, a Taiwan expert and senior fellow with the Ottawa-based Macdonald-Laurier Institute, told Quartz, “and that Taipei has seized it.”

But the island’s rising profile has angered Beijing.

“China still considers Taiwan part of its territory, though the ruling Communist Party has never had sovereign control over it.  Almost all governments in the world, as well as groups like the UN, recognize only the sovereignty of the government in Beijing.  As a result, China is able to actively prevent Taiwan from joining organizations like the WHO, whose membership is predicated on statehood.”

Now the issue involves the World Health Assembly’s late May 2020 meeting.  Because the UN recognizes only Beijing, and WHO is a UN body, Taiwan is not a member of the WHO.

After the 2009 influenza epidemic, Taiwan was invited to send observers to WHA under the name “Chinese Taipei.”  That ended in 2016 when Taiwan elected a pro-independence president and China rejected Taiwan’s participation.

“But this year, the US and its allies are more vocal than before, in part because Taiwan’s public health response has impressed them, but also because it’s an issue they can leverage in their conflict with Beijing,” Quartz reported.

The U.S. Senate directed the State Department to support Taiwan’s participation at the World Health Assembly.

Quartz is a business-focused English-language international news organization that launched from New York City in 2012 and is owned by Japanese business media company Uzabase.

Editor’s Note:  Articles in MEDIA SPOTLIGHT are excerpts from publications that show the industry what the public is reading about fasteners and fastener companies.