The contextualization of Taiwan's international relations

The real size of a small island

The number of states that recognize Taiwan is the first indicator of the extent to which this country is isolated from the rest of the world. At the time of writing, Taiwan was recognized by 14 UN member states plus the Holy See. This is not much higher than the number of UN members that recognize Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and significantly less than Western Sahara, Kosovo and especially Palestine. Like other unrepresented and unrecognized states, Taiwan is not a member of the UN. It is not a member of any specialized agency within the UN system. It is, however, a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), which recognizes it under the name Chinese Taipei, rather than its official name.

But there is another side of Taiwan, which allows little room for comparison with other unrepresented and unrecognized states. Let us make a very practical case in point: Abkhazia and South Ossetia issue their own passports, but these are not ‘recognized in most of the world, and their citizens mostly have dual-citizenship that grants them a valid passport from another country’ (Li, 2019). In contrast, at the time of writing carriers of the Taiwanese passport could travel visa-free to 146 countries, which puts them in 33rd place, ahead of, for example, the Russian Federation and the PRC.

Taiwan's contribution to the international community is often high profile, as has been recently demonstrated by its handling of the COVID-19 virus that has plagued the entire world, with Taiwan being the least affected among developed states. Indeed, in terms of relative development, Taiwan is considered one of the richest countries in the world. According to the 2019 data generated by the International Monetary Fund, Taiwan had the 22nd largest economy and was in 17th place in the ranking of countries by GDP per capita. This explains all the attention that Taiwan attracts, which dwarfs that received by all other unrepresented and unrecognized states combined. Starting with a simple insertion of the keyword ‘Taiwan’ into the Google search engine (Figure 4.1) the difference already becomes obvious. We get a similar picture if we limit our research to non-fiction literature via the Google Scholar engine (Figure 4.2).