Taiwan in the eye of the storm: interview with Taipei's representative in France

Europe, the US and Japan are strengthening economic ties with Taiwan. On 1 June, Japan announced a massive investment in joint research into cutting-edge chip technology with the island's leading semiconductor company. And while tensions between Beijing and the West are on the rise, Taiwan seems to become ever more popular with western democracies. 

Taiwan's Representative to France, Wu Chih-chung. © Courtesy Wu Chih-chung

The island state, officially regarded by China as a renegade province, boasts the world's most sophisticated semi-conductor industry, has grown from a dictatorship into a full-fledged democracy, and is prospering economically.

Most countries in the world have diplomatic ties with Beijing -- an engagement which demands they acknowledge Taiwan to be an "inseparable part" of China. Meanwhile, Taiwan keeps channels open through so-called trade and cultural offices, which function as de-facto embassies. RFI spoke to François Wu Chih-chung, the head of Taiwan's Representative Office in France, a former deputy Foreign Minister of Taiwan and a graduate of the prestigious Université Paris I  in France.

RFI: How do you see France's relationship with Taiwan?

Wu: "France has more and more the will to agree on the idea we are fighting for: that the world needs to accept that Taiwan can help, that there can be exchange with Taiwan. We can now talk, even though we don't have diplomatic relations."

One of their purposes is to invade Taiwan militarily. So if we can continue to maintain the most advanced semiconductor technology, I believe that we will have support from the US, Europe or Japan, from all these countries where industry needs semiconductors.

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Podcast: Taiwan Representative to France, François Wu Chih-chung

France established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1964, severing relations with "The Republic of China" in Taiwan, where the Nationalist government had taken refuge after losing the civil war against the communists in 1949.

Franco-Taiwanese relations were initially maintained through businessmen in obscure basement offices in Paris and Taipei. According to French Sinologist Jean-Pierre Cabestan, who characterised the French-Taiwanese relationship as "shopkeeper diplomacy," the breakthrough came in 1972, when Taiwan was allowed to open an official culture and tourism office that was also authorised to issue visas for the island. In 1995, the office was upgraded to its current form, the Taipei Representative Office in France (BRTF).

Since Wu was appointed as BRTF head in 2018, he has seen "a lot of accomplishments". The Speaker of Taiwan's parliament was invited to the French National Assembly. A new Taiwan bureau has been opened in the southern French city of Aix-en-Provence.

And this year, the French Senate voted by an unprecedented unanimous 304 votes for a resolution to support Taiwan's participation in the WHO, the International Criminal Police Organisation (Interpol), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

RFI: Over the last decades, Taiwan-China relations were in a rollercoaster. There was a rapprochement in the 1990s, the "1992 Concensus" where both China and Taiwan agreed that there is "One China," slow growth of cross-straits relations, but recently this movement has been marred by increasing threats and Beijing dropping the "peaceful" word from its rhetorical "peaceful re-unification" statements, suggesting that military intervention may be on the books.

Wu: "There is no 're-unification' between China and Taiwan, because the current government in Beijing, of the People's Republic of China, has never controlled Taiwan since her creation in 1949."

The re-election of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen angered China Taiwan Presidential Office/AFP/File

Wu points out that modern Taiwan is the heritage of three, vastly different periods: a "European" period, starting with Dutch, then Spanish occupation in the 17th century, followed by a takeover by Qing Dynasty China, which had to cede the Island to Japan at the end of the First Sino-Japanese war in 1895. Japan formally renounced sovereignty over the island in 1952 but, by then, the Chinese Nationalist government was already solidly established on the island.

"I can tell you that more than 90 percent of the Taiwanese people refuse 'One Country Two Systems'," says Wu, referring to Beijing's plan to incorporate Taiwan under Beijing's rule while allowing it to keep its own economic and political, but not defence and diplomatic, systems.

"Everyone's seen what happened in Hong Kong" - China's test-case for 'One Country, Two Systems' after it passed from British colonial rule to Beijing's sovereignty in 1997. Beijing slowly eroded freedoms, leading to massive protests which, in turn, led to Beijing virtually taking over policing and politics in the city. "So, from a Taiwanese point of view, the 'One Country Two Systems' really has become unacceptable."

RFI: Would you rather maintain the status quo as it has been for decades - Taiwan living a shadow life in the world, officially recognised by only a handful of countries, being able to trade and prosper but never in an official capacity - or would you want to be really independent, regardless of the consequences threatened by Beijing?

Wu: "I am an ambassador. Not recognised by France, but everybody calls me Taiwan's ambassador to France. And we still have 15 countries that recognise Taiwan. So we are already independent. We don't need to declare independence.

The US government says it has approved the sale of $1 billion worth of advanced air-to-ground missiles to Taiwan, amid growing threats to the island from China AFP/File

"We know that if we try to change the name of the country, we will make China angry. China has an authoritarian political system, which obeys the will of one person. And they can use the military to invade Taiwan. That's a result we don't want."

RFI: Do you have enough trust in the Taiwan Relations Act under which the US promises to help Taiwan in case of a mainland invasion and provides defensive weapons?

Wu: "Stabilty in the Taiwan Strait is in America's interest. Not only because we are a democracy, but also because the USA imports a huge quantity of its semi-conductors from Taiwan."

The market-leading Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is currently building a $12 billion chip factory in Arizona, but other countries are interested too: on 1 June, Japan announced that it has signed off on a $338 million semiconductor research project to develop cutting-edge chip technology in Taiwan with TSMC.

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"France, Japan and other countries have the same concerns, but because the US has a stronger army and defence capability, they can resist the threats from China. France also recently held a military manoeuvre with the Quad, with Australia with Japan. So I think more and more countries in the world are concerned about stability in the region, and that functions as a security guarantee for Taiwan.

"France published its own Indo-Pacific strategy. France has a lot of interest in the region and, because of New Caledonia, France is also a power in the region. So they have their own reasons for maintaining a balance between China and Taiwan. And that is what they are trying to do."