The PRC’s efforts to constrain Taiwan at the UN have broader implications for international governance, as it shows a prioritization of one member state’s national interests over the global community’s-as exemplified by Taiwan’s damaging exclusion from global health debates during the coronavirus pandemic. It has also ensured that a plurality of countries back its views at the UN level and will cast votes alongside it-particularly on issues of Taiwan’s participation-and it reinforces this support through economic pressure on governments. The PRC has likewise used UN Resolution 2758 and bilateral normalization agreements with other member states to falsely claim that its “One China” Principle is a universally accepted norm. These developments have played out alongside marked shifts in the guidance of the UN Office of Legal Affairs on Taiwan, where it only 15 years ago cited an ambiguous and undefined “One China” policy, but now reiterates the PRC position on Taiwan. Recently, it has come to light that the PRC and its representatives have altered historic UN documents to change references of “Taiwan” to “Taiwan, Province of China.” (Examples are presented in a case study.)
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This includes withholding UN accreditation from NGOs and civil society groups that do not refer to Taiwan as a part of the PRC in their organizational materials or on their websites. The PRC has likewise sought to force its views on nomenclature relating to Taiwan within the UN. The UN and its specialized agencies have not made the texts of these agreements, such as that of the 2005 memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the PRC and the World Health Organization, available to the public or to any entity beyond the main signatories, though leaked guidance memos provide insights into the scope of the MOU’s content (See Appendix B). The PRC has since worked to “internationalize” its “One China” Principle and to conflate it with UN Resolution 2758, a revisionist shift from the original intent of the document.īeijing has managed to further institutionalize and normalize its stance on Taiwan within the UN by signing secret agreements with UN bodies, restricting Taiwan’s access to the UN and its facilities, and embedding PRC nationals across various levels of UN staff. The PRC’s efforts to rewrite Taiwan’s status at the UN ramped up in the 1990s and early 2000s at the same time as the island’s democratization.
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Instead, PRC officials assumed the “China” seat and only later began to leverage their position to promote Beijing’s stance on Taiwan at the UN level. Prime Minister Zhou Enlai noted that, if Resolution 2758 passed, “the status of Taiwan is not yet decided.” Beijing, through its proxies at the UN, expressed its unwillingness to join the organization if it allowed “‘two Chinas,’ ‘one China, one Taiwan,’ or ‘the status of Taiwan remaining to be determined.’” However, given that Beijing did not enjoy the same level of international influence then as it does today, it did not reject the resolution when it passed. The PRC understood then that the resolution did not contain the Taiwan conclusions it wanted. This is reflected in the official historic record and meeting minutes as well as in the resolutions raised at the time for the General Assembly’s consideration. Yet, in passing the resolution in 1971, the countries solely intended to grant the seat occupied by the Republic of China in the General Assembly and the Security Council to the PRC.