September 23, 2016
Joanne Ou, the director of Taiwan’s United Nations Task Force, at her office in Manhattan this month. Ms. Ou is responsible for efforts to gain greater recognition for Taiwanese.
Bryan Thomas for The New York Times
From her 12th-floor corner office overlooking the thrum of Manhattan’s East 42nd Street, Joanne Ou, a Taiwanese diplomat, can catch a glimpse of the motorcades ferrying foreign leaders to the United Nations General Assembly a few blocks to the east.
But during a week of political pageantry that features high-minded paeans to universal rights, Ms. Ou and her colleagues at Taiwan’s de facto consulate in New York can only watch the proceedings from afar, their frustration mounting with every rousing speech about justice and global inclusiveness.
Since 1971, when Taiwan was forced to give up its seat at the United Nations to Mao Zedong’s People’s Republic of China, the self-governed island of 23 million has been wandering in the diplomatic wilderness, barred from the United Nations and affiliated bodies like the World Health Organization while its Olympic athletes are forced to compete under the banner of Chinese Taipei.
“The United Nations talks about justice and human rights, yet they pretend we don’t exist,” said Ms. Ou, who, as the director of Taiwan’s United Nations Task Force, is charged with a campaign to gain greater recognition for her people. “It’s humiliating, ridiculous and childish.”
Ms. Ou was directing her frustration at both China, Taiwan’s historical rival, and the United Nations technocrats who are increasingly willing to acquiesce to Beijing’s demands that Taiwan be considered a breakaway province ever since the 1949 civil war that ended with the defeat of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist army by Mao’s Communist rebels.
Mr. Chiang’s forces fled to what was once known as Formosa, a lush, mountainous island across the Taiwan Straits, and set up a rival government, the Republic of China.
Over the years, Beijing has wielded its growing economic and political muscle to chip away at Taiwan’s international stature, picking off its diplomatic allies through generous aid packages — and retaliatory gestures — that have reduced to 22 the number of nations, including the Vatican, that still maintain official relations with Taiwan.
But after four decades as something of a diplomatic nonentity, Taiwan is pushing back with renewed vigor. This month, a group of Taiwanese activists swept through the United States, holding protests that sought to highlight China’s efforts to sideline Taiwan. The group is also lobbying members of Congress to press for the easing of State Department restrictions that bar Taiwan’s top leaders, including the president, vice president and minister of foreign affairs, from setting foot in Washington.
“It’s a very sad situation that denies you and me the opportunity to hear from Taiwan’s democratically elected leaders,” said Jerome A. Cohen, an adjunct senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
This week, Taiwanese diplomats began a campaign to ask Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to press the United Nations secretary general into allowing Taiwan to join bodies like the International Civil Aviation Organization and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Such efforts, most experts agree, will likely be for naught. Vincent Wei-Cheng Wang, a Taiwan-born political scientist at Ithaca College, said China had been increasingly assertive in denying Taipei a role in international affairs, thwarting the aspirations of one of the world’s most advanced economies and a vibrant democracy.
“I find it frustrating that the international community has not been able to find creative ways to incorporate Taiwan onto the world stage,” said Mr. Wang, noting past compromises that allowed both North and South Korea to participate in the United Nations, and the 2012 vote that gave Palestinians a nonvoting seat at the table. “Taiwan’s dignity and survival deserve more international support.”
The indignities are conveyed through United Nations documents and official speeches that refer to Taiwan as “Taiwan, Province of China” and color-coded maps that suggest that the two states are one. A new security measures, introduced this summer at the behest of China, blocks Taiwanese passport holders from touring the United Nations complex in New York, citing a requirement that visitors must have IDs issued by a member or observer state.
“We’re talking about elderly people who fly 14 hours to New York, having waited all their lives to see the U.N., and then are turned away at the door,” said Brian Su, the deputy director general at the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in New York. “It’s humiliating, and the U.N. won’t even return the $20 they paid for the tour!”
Taiwanese diplomats, though they are also barred from entering the United Nations, take a long view of the situation, citing the Palestinians’ increasingly successful struggle for international recognition. Their battle plan includes behind-the-scenes diplomacy and a well-financed soft power campaign that seeks to highlight Taiwan’s accomplishments since it shed authoritarian rule in the mid-1980s.
On most nights, the lobby of their building in Midtown is a beehive of public events that showcase Taiwanese films, the island’s high-tech prowess and Taiwan’s growing role as a beacon of tolerance in Asia for gays and ethnic minorities.
The diplomatic maneuverings that takes place upstairs are less fruitful. The election in January of Tsai Ing-wen, who is Taiwan’s first female president and whose Democratic Progressive Party has in the past flirted with independence, is sending a chill through cross-strait relations. Under her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou of the Kuomintang, Taiwan and China signed a series of agreements that included increased trade, direct flights and a surge of mainland tourists that buoyed the Taiwanese economy.
President Ma’s eight-year effort to forge closer ties also yielded a handful of modest diplomatic achievements. In 2009, China allowed Taiwan to join the World Health Assembly, the decision-making body of the World Health Organization, but only as an observer. Four years later, Beijing dropped its opposition to Taiwanese participation at a gathering of the International Civil Aviation Organization, which sets global safety standards.
Even so, Beijing’s good will appears to have dried up. Taiwan has yet to receive an invitation to the aviation group’s forum in Montreal on Tuesday, and the Chinese government in recent months has signaled its displeasure with President Tsai by drastically reducing the number of Taiwanese tour groups allowed to visit the mainland, devastating the island’s tourist industry.
“It’s really heartbreaking for us,” said Ms. Ou, 42, the Taiwanese diplomat, who is in her second stint as chief of Taipei’s quest for greater international recognition. Before the General Assembly, Ms. Ou helped coordinate efforts to encourage heads of state to mention Taiwan’s aspirations during their public speeches. Last year, she said, the tally came to 16.
Throughout the week, she and her colleagues have been glued to their computer screens, anxiously watching the online speeches for words of encouragement.
By Wednesday evening, the reviews were mixed. The presidents of Panama and the Dominican Republic, two of Taiwan’s longtime allies, had failed to mention its plight, but the president of Nauru, the tiny Micronesian island nation, delivered a semantic home run, with three paragraphs condemning Taiwan’s exclusion from the international community.
The remarks, which described Taiwan as “Nauru’s close friend,” left Ms. Ou feeling elated, prompting her to recite a traditional Chinese expression that extols perseverance in the face of a more powerful foe.
“When you are small and fighting a much bigger adversary,” she said, “you had better use your wisdom.”
