Britain’s duty to Taiwan

It’s not often that a brass plate sparks a diplomatic incident, as happened this week in Vilnius. Lithuania invited Taiwan to establish a ‘Taiwan representative office’ in the capital. Beijing told Vilnius that the name was unacceptable, and ordered the government to replace the word ‘Taiwan’ with ‘Taipei’ or ‘Taipei City’. Lithuania held its ground, whereupon Beijing withdrew its ambassador and simultaneously expelled Lithuania’s woman in Beijing.

There is more to this, as you might imagine, than meets the eye. Since its election of a centre-right government last October, Lithuania has been steadily reaching out to Taipei. There are good reasons for this, not least its own very recent history of bullying by an overbearing neighbour. Partly, it’s a matter of Vilnius’s interest in tapping into Taipei’s technology-centred economy. But there is also an instinctive sense that Lithuania ought to be friendly towards a functioning democracy with a decent record on human rights.

More to the point, however, Lithuania began to wonder what it had hitherto got out of holding its nose and, in common with many other European countries, cosying up to the dictatorial state on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. The answer, it concluded, was not much. China’s so-called 17+1 charm offensive, aimed at wooing central and eastern European states, including Lithuania, with large loans and cash injections, had largely passed it by. Instead the money went to more tractable Eastern European and Balkan states (think the €4 billion Chinese-financed high-speed rail link between Belgrade and Budapest, or the €1.5 billion Chinese university campus being built in Hungary). Meanwhile China had been throwing its weight around in other less desirable ways. In 2019 the CCP apparently ordered friendly demonstrators to face down protests over Hong Kong in Vilnius, and later condoned the removal of a memorial to the protesters at the Hill of Crosses, a national symbol of Lithuanian resistance to Soviet control; and in April 2020 it came out that China had been spying wholesale on at least 500 prominent Lithuanians.

There are lessons here for both the EU and the UK about approaches to China. Hitherto the EU has largely toed the PRC line: while making the occasional noises about human rights for public consumption, it has otherwise avoided upsetting the CCP or getting in the way of its ambitions. As part of this policy Brussels has resolutely refused to consider even trade talks with Taiwan. This is just fine for the dominant western members and their business interests (VW alone, remember, has vast sales and some 100,000 employees in China); but it is rapidly becoming untenable.

The mistrust of China seen this week in Vilnius, and the consequent urge to take Taiwan seriously, is increasingly mainstream. In May this year the European parliament — normally the complaisant poodle of the Brussels elite — voted to pull back from a trade deal with China over the Uyghur scandal. A month later, it suggested, to the horror of the Commission, that Europe should look at an investment deal with Taiwan on its own merits rather than with one eye on Beijing’s wagging finger. There is also something else that Brussels may care to ponder: is it still a good idea to put the financial screws on more independent-minded states such as Poland or Hungary to make them change their internal policies? Both have already taken large loans from China and are well aware that China is prepared to pay handsomely for influence. Does the EU want to drive them further into the arms of Chinese financiers, thereby making them more beholden to the CCP and willing to do its bidding?

What about the UK? We don’t face the same difficulties as the EU, but we are also at a crossroads. Pre-Brexit, our China policy was similar to the European one: keep our heads down and say nothing official that might offend Beijing. What mattered was to maintain the miraculous supply of endless cheap goods and flow of funds that kept the wheels of commerce turning without asking too many awkward questions about either the ugly state-capitalist repression that lay behind it or the ambition of the CCP to harness the profits to feed its global ambitions.

With us too, however, this won’t do any more. Our post-Brexit policy, to recast ourselves as a global trade player, is entirely compatible with the values of Taiwan. It is not compatible with Chinese-style mercantilism, nor with the PRC culture of state-controlled capitalism and rampant state subsidy. Nor, in the long term, is it compatible with a policy of avoiding offence at all costs to an unpredictable and at times irascible state whose word cannot be trusted and which does not observe at least a semblance of the rule of law or allow basic freedoms to its people.

Our attitude to such things will be noticed. Recognition of Taiwan as a state, it is true, is out of the question as a matter of realpolitik. But short of that we must be seen to press for positive support for what is a large economic player and a civilised democratic polity. A good start would be to allow high-level government meetings (hitherto banned in an effort to keep Beijing onside), and root openly for Taiwan to take its place in organisations such as the WHO, the ICAO and Interpol, where it has a good deal to offer, and call out the opposition of the PRC for the self-serving humbug that it is.

Meanwhile, there is the Taiwan mission in London, a handsome Victorian building in Grosvenor Gardens that until 1950 was the Chinese embassy. At present, on the PRC’s insistence, this is primly called the Taipei Representative Office. Why not do as the Lithuanians have done and quietly give it permission to change its name to the Taiwan Representative Office, making it clear that this in no way implied recognition of Taiwan as a state? A move like that would certainly put Beijing neatly on the spot. Would it really sever ambassadorial relations with the Court of St James on the basis of such a minor matter, knowing that many would see it as a childish overreaction? We would have to see. But boy, would that send a message that Britain will negotiate with whoever it wishes and will not meekly be told by a government halfway across the world what words are allowed to appear on a brass plate in London.