China is shrewdly using the COVID-19 crisis to advance its international agenda. Beijing insists that it has made heroic efforts to contain and beat back the disease and then used its experience and its deep pockets to raise China’s diplomatic profile with extensive aid to other countries hard hit by the pandemic.
A less-noticed element of that campaign is an amplification of policy to isolate Taiwan, an effort that has assumed greater urgency in recent months with the re-election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen earlier this year.
China has for years insisted that Taiwan, which it considers a renegade province, cannot be a member of the World Health Organization, the United Nations body that is on the front-lines of organizing an international response to global health crises — an objection that extends to any international institution of which Beijing is also a member.