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Development of the relations between EU and Taiwan–Past and present
I: Introduction
A paper on the diplomatic history of relations between the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC on Taiwan/Taiwan) and the European Union (EU) and its member states could still be problematic and controversial, even in this post Cold War era of the early 21st century, when most issues of international relations are losing their contentious ideological implications. Some may argue that this history indicates how an isolated pariah state like Taiwan, which has long been bullied by the People’s Republic of China (PRC), can survive well in a hostile international setting, and how unorthodox diplomacy launched by Taiwan can become a substitute for official relations. Equally, others may also argue that this relationship is historically insignificant and politically incorrect, because Taiwan, not being recognized as an independent sovereign state by any EU member state, does not have the capacity to build relationships with most of European states, let alone with the inter-governmental organization like the EU. As a result, this paper is understandably full of paradox, uncertainties, conflicting political opinions, and differing historical and political interpretations, mainly, but not only, because of Taiwan’s ambiguous and unrecognized international status.
To those who regard Taiwan as ‘a part/province of the PRC’, EU-Taiwanese relations and bilateral relations between Taiwan and each EU member states simply do not exist on a political level, at least officially. To them, a study of this diplomatic history could either be regarded as meaningless, irrelevant, or mischievous – and politically incorrect. To those who hold this view, any contact made by the Taiwanese with EU officials ought to be classed as an action of the PRC, rather than an action by Taiwan. Subsequently, when Jim Janssen van Raay, a former Dutch Member of European Parliament (MEP), mentioned the name of Mr. Eric Wu, a Taiwanese visitor, at a sitting in the European Parliament (EP), his reference to Taiwan appeared as ‘the People’s Republic of China’ on the EU official record .
Nevertheless, not all EU official documents have mistaken Taiwan for part of the PRC. If a EU regulation is an anti-dumping measure, EU officials always make it very clear that Taiwan is ‘Taiwan’ and not ‘a part of the PRC’. In this respect, EU official have never mispronounced the ROC as the PRC; they understand they must not mix up these two states. They would, otherwise, have considerable difficulties in implementing any EU regulation of this kind.
In contrast, those who see the ROC on Taiwan as a state, as some of the Taiwanese do, tend to regard EU-Taiwanese relations as very important to the survival of Taiwan. For the Taiwanese, the EU is not only a trading partner in the world, it is also one of Taiwan’s biggest markets in Europe, and they cannot afford to ignore their diplomatic relations with it. Any change to these relations would affect the operation of their business and industrial development. In addition, some Taiwanese intellectuals, such as the Oxford educated Dr. David Huang, have taken the peaceful EU integration as a good political model for Taiwan to link with the rising economy of China, when talking about the so called Chinese unification . As a result, they have paid close attention to the prospects of this EU-Taiwanese relationship, knowing that relations in the past have been unstable, controversial, and problematic.
That there have been very few known instances of diplomatic contact between Taiwan and west European countries, except on economic and commercial level, is perhaps because (1) with the PRC, a big brother of Taiwan, watching, diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the EU and its member states have been difficult; (2) west European leaders have seldom given much thought to the Taiwan issue; and (3) with the controversial nature of EU-Taiwanese relations obstructing formal diplomatic engagement, many EU-Taiwan meeting may not have been publicly revealed. Furthermore, no European scholar or journalist, not even a Taiwanese scholar, has ever pieced this particular chapter of diplomatic history together, if it can be called such. There are many research works about Taiwan, but most of them have concentrated on Taiwan’s bilateral relations with the United States, Britain, Japan, and the PRC etc., on Taiwan’s failure at the UN and in international politics; or on Taiwan’s economic success and economic development. But none of them have written about this controversial area of diplomatic history.
This paper is among the first to try to piece together this problematic form of diplomatic history, aiming especially to examine the development of informal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the EU and its member states. This paper also aims to explain why this has been such a rock relationship, and in some senses a non-relationship. Their relations have become rock because of the PRC’ successive and successful interferences, and non-existent because of the lack of formal diplomatic relations between Taiwan and the EU and it members.
In the following analysis, Taiwan will be assumed to be a state actor, or at least an independent non-state actor. Taking such a position inevitably invites controversy, but without it there can be no clear picture of the Taiwanese side of this problematic history. Defining the PRC’s role in these pages is less difficult. Although Mainland China was historically Taiwan’s motherland in cultural sense, it is now also Taiwan’s political adversary, using both ‘hot’ and ‘cold’ means to intimidate and isolate Taiwan when trying to interfere with Taiwan’s internal and external policy. As Chairman Mao told Edgar Snow, ‘on some occasion [the PRC] … deliberately made a loud noise [i.e. by bombing], as, for example, [it did] around Quemony and Matsu’, two Taiwan’s off-shore islands. The PRC government, because of its claim that Taiwan is a part of China, is the prime actor trying to push the international community to isolate Taiwan.
There are two fundamental factors that have made the EU-Taiwanese relationship unstable and controversial: (1) the dramatic change of Taiwan’s international political position and international status in the 1970s; and (2) the war of diplomatic attrition between the ROC and the PRC for recognition as the sole government of ‘China’. Generally speaking, it is the East-West confrontation of the Cold War and its legacy that have made these two factors so long-lasting; and it has been the PRC’s containment of Taiwan that in effect has prevented the EU from launching any constructive engagement in the form of an open EU-ROC rapprochement.
This paper will concentrate on the historical development of these two factors, examining why and how EU-ROC diplomatic history has been so greatly affected by them. By 1971, when Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations and became a ‘pariah state’, these two factors began to loom increasingly large, overshadowing Taiwan’s relations with the EU and its member states. It was in the 1970s that all the EU states terminated their formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan and the EU’s relations with Taiwan were completely cut off. Evidently, Taiwan lost the war of diplomatic attrition with the PRC during this decade. Since then, the government of the ROC on Taiwan has never been recognized diplomatically by any European country, neither as the sole government of China, or even as the government of Taiwan. The PRC’s containment of Taiwan became effective and Taiwan was isolated.
However, Taiwan’s success in terms of economic development, in the longer term, has given Taiwan a strong hand (1) in resisting the PRC’s ‘Containing Taiwan’ Campaign on an economic basis; and (2) in linking up informally with nearly every country in the world, including the PRC and the EU member states. This paper will partly concentrate on the rapprochement launched by the EU and its member states with Taiwan in the 1970s. It was also in this decade that relations between Taiwan and the EU member states began to build up, using trade relations and flags of convenience as a basis for managing a working relationship. In the 1970s, Spain, Britain, France, West Germany, Belgium, and Greece established trade offices in Taipei.
Collective actions taken by the EC’s member states towards the ROC on Taiwan included: (1) the build-up of financial links; (2) informal EU-ROC trade talks; (3) the semi-official visits paid by EU Commission officials to Taiwan in the late 1980s and early 1990s; and (4) the establishment of economic and commercial relations. But there have in addition been a variety of bilateral relations between individual EU member states and the ROC, the more significant of which have been the relations between the ROC and the UK, Germany, France, Spain, and the Netherlands.
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