Taipei [Taiwan], July 31 (ANI): Forty-nine lawmakers from 24 countries discussed China’s escalation of tensions with Taiwan and assessed the economic impact a potential conflict could have on the international community, Voice of America reported.
The two-day summit was organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, a group that includes hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries who are concerned about how democracies deal with China. The conference brought the largest-ever foreign parliamentary delegation to Taiwan.
In a keynote speech on Tuesday, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said China’s threat to any country is a threat to the world.
“Taiwan will do everything in its power to support the ‘democracy umbrella’ with its democratic partners, so as to protect them from the threat of authoritarian expansion,” he told attending lawmakers.
https://x.com/ChingteLai/status/1818187690409697371
The meeting is part of a trend of foreign visits that has surged since former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visited to the island around two years ago.
Notably, despite having its own army, currency and democratic political system of government, Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations and has few formal diplomatic allies. China opposes any international engagement with Taiwan, which it regards as a part of its territory, and has been whittling away at the number of countries that have official ties with the island. Taiwan currently has 12 diplomatic allies, VOA reported.
In response to the rise in international attention and visits, Beijing has carried out a series of major military exercises around the island and almost daily military harassment that has included a mix of fighter jets, naval and coast guard vessels and drones. It has also amped up its rhetoric that unification is inevitable.
At Tuesday’s conference, attending lawmakers adopted a model motion they say will pave the way for them to pass similar resolutions in their parliaments at home. The aim of the motion is to counter China’s interpretation of United Nations Resolution 2758 in their legislatures.
UN Resolution 2758 was passed on October 25, 1971 and is a key international agreement that Beijing uses to isolate Taiwan.
However, experts believe that the resolution only decided that the People’s Republic of China would replace the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It did not, however, determine Taiwan’s sovereign status, as reported by VOA.
While some countries, such as the US, have rejected China’s claim that the UN resolution supports its sovereignty claim over Taiwan, some foreign lawmakers attending the summit say the model resolution adopted by IPAC members could inform governments about the possibility of China using its interpretation of the UN resolution as a pretext to launch a potential military attack against Taiwan.
“We see the danger of China’s false interpretation of [the U.N. resolution] as bolstering the pretext for legality of any future attack or coercion against Taiwan, so we think talking about this issue will help bring the potential danger onto the radar of different governments,” Reinhard Butikofer, former chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China, said.
The summit also focused on the impact a potential conflict over Taiwan could have on countries around the world.
Building on a campaign called “Operation Mist” that IPAC launched last September, the alliance hopes to push more governments to conduct assessments of the economic impact of a potential Taiwan Strait crisis on their countries. The Taiwan Strait is the body of water that separates Taiwan and China.
“There is a strong desire among IPAC members to continue this operation because they believe people in their countries need to know the economic impact of a potential Taiwan Strait crisis,” Luke de Pulford, the executive director of IPAC, said.
While the IPAC summit sought to raise international awareness about the plight of Taiwan, at least eight lawmakers from six countries, including Bolivia, Slovakia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, alleged they received calls or texts from Chinese diplomats urging them not to attend the conference.
Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry condemned Beijing’s “despicable act” in a statement, while de Pulford of IPAC said the Chinese government’s pressure campaign is simply “illegitimate.”
Notably, IPAC has faced repeated pressure from the Chinese government since its founding in 2020. Some members of the group have been sanctioned by the Chinese government, while an indictment from the US Justice Department showed that other IPAC members have been targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, VOA reported.
On the other hand, the Chinese Embassy in Washington urged foreign lawmakers attending the summit to “stop exploiting the Taiwan question to interfere in China’s internal affairs and political manipulation for selfish gains.”
“The Taiwan question is one hundred percent China’s internal affair, which no foreign forces have the right to interfere in,” the Chinese Embassy’s spokesperson, Liu Pengyu, told VOA in a written statement. (ANI)
