Taiwan minister hopes to work with China on health issues

GENEVA – Taiwan hopes to work with China to help improve the health of people “on both sides of the Taiwan Strait” and is engaging more with the world to fight viruses like Zika, MERS, Ebola and dengue, the Taiwanese health minister said in an interview Wednesday.

Amid new questions about the future of China-Taiwan relations, Lin Tzou-yien said he shook hands with his Chinese counterpart, Li Bin, a day earlier at an annual World Health Organization meeting. Speaking to the World Health Assembly on Wednesday, the Taiwanese minister echoed the calls of several nations for Taiwan to take a greater role within the WHO.

“I call on WHO and its member states to support the 23 million citizens of Chinese Taipei by facilitating us to participate robustly in WHO-related meetings and activities. Then, no one will be left behind,” Lin said, using a term for Taiwan that is more palatable in Beijing.

Taiwan has “observer” status at the assembly and is not a member of the U.N.

The minister’s visit comes against the backdrop of a highly charged atmosphere between China and Taiwan after independence-leaning President Tsai Ing-wen took office Friday. Separately Wednesday, a member of China’s body for relations with Taiwan wrote in a newspaper opinion piece that Tsai’s politics were “extreme” because she is an unmarried woman lacking the emotional balance provided by romantic and family life.

Taiwan’s former Nationalist government was a founding member of the United Nations in 1945. But the Nationalists were forced to retreat to Taiwan after communist forces won control of the mainland in 1949, and the Beijing government took over China’s U.N. seat in 1971.

China claims Taiwan as a province and resists any move that appears to give the self-governing, democratic island the trappings of sovereignty. Beijing has threatened to attack if Taiwan declares independence and has stationed hundreds of missiles opposite the island.

Taiwan’s supporters have been trying since 1993 to get the U.N. General Assembly to list the issue of the island’s admission on the U.N. agenda, but Beijing’s arguments have prevailed.

Lin’s attendance at the World Health Assembly is generally considered a positive sign for the new administration’s relations with China. Beijing only recently began letting Taiwan attend the meeting and could easily have blocked its attendance by citing Tsai’s refusal so far to explicitly endorse the “One-China” policy.

“I am very happy to be here to have the continuous participation in the WHA especially after the political transition on May 20,” Lin told The Associated Press.

In his address, Lin expressed his “gratitude” to director-general Dr. Margaret Chan, who is Chinese, and the secretariat of the U.N. health agency “for their efforts to facilitating Chinese Taipei’s continued participation in this assembly.”

Lin, a U.S.-trained pediatrician, pointed to a bilateral health agreement between Taiwan and China and expressed hopes to “work together for the health of the people of both sides.” He also noted Taiwan’s growing role in international health care, notably involving training of medical personnel from other countries.

“Taiwan has successfully transformed from an international aid recipient to aid provider,” he said. “For instance, in the last 12 months, we have organized several training workshops for 14 neighbour countries to strengthen their capability to respond to Ebola, MERS, dengue and Zika” — four viruses that have been priorities for WHO in recent years.