Taiwan and the UN: On the Outside Looking in

On October 25, 1971, the 26th Session of the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted Resolution 2758 by a vote of 76 to 35 (with 17 states abstaining). In that resolution, the U.N. decided:

...to restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China [PRC] and to recognize the representatives of its Government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupied at the United Nations and it all the organizations related to it.

With that, the Republic of China (ROC) government on Taiwan, then led by Chiang, was kicked out of the U.N. seat it had occupied since the body’s founding. With a roar of cheering from the PRC’s supporters, Taiwan was shut out of the United Nations and all its constituent bodies.

In our cover story, Rosemary Foot describes how Beijing’s approach to the U.N. has evolved in the 50 years since that historic vote. I’ll take up the inverse question: How the ROC lost its U.N. representation and its many attempts to work its way back in.

Taiwan’s U.N. Banishment

Taiwan didn’t leave the U.N. without a fight. ROC Foreign Minister Chou Shu-kai, who led his government’s delegation to that pivotal UNGA session in October 1971, argued that “my country had earned its place in the United Nations by virtue of its contribution to peace and freedom during the Second World War.” He also accused the “Chinese communist regime” of having “negated all the basic [U.N.] Charter principles” and warned that Beijing’s “interest in the United Nations stemmed primarily from a desire to broaden the scope of its aggressive activity and to transform the organization into an instrument of its own policy” (both complaints, as Foot notes in our cover story, that continue to be voiced today).

To admit the PRC, Chou said, “would be a tragic and irreparable mistake” that “could wreck the United Nations.”

Despite Chou’s passionate plea, by October 1971 the writing was on the wall: The PRC was joining the United Nations. Henry Kissinger, U.S. President Richard Nixon’s influential national security advisor, had been to China twice that year, a clear sign of the thaw in PRC-U.S. relations. With its courtship of Beijing in full swing, Washington was no longer willing to actively prevent the PRC from being represented in the Untied Nations.

However, that doesn’t mean the United States wanted Taiwan pushed out. Washington worked hard to keep the ROC inside the United Nations in some capacity. Leading up to the 1971 General Assembly session, the Nixon administration tried to advance a rival U.N. resolution that would grant the PRC the “China” seat at the U.N., but also “ensure that the Republic of China was not deprived of its representation.”

Washington argued that, whatever arrangement the U.N. came to, it needed to reflect the “incontestable reality” of “the existence of both the People’s Republic of China and the Republic of China.” That language still echoes today, for example, in President Tsai Ing-wen’s comment to the BBC in 2020 that Taiwan is “an independent country already” and China should “face reality.”

The PRC, however, soundly rejected Washington’s alternative proposal on the grounds that Taiwan was “an inalienable part of Chinese territory and a province of China.” To offer the ROC a separate U.N. seat would be tantamount to recognizing Taiwan’s independence, Beijing argued, and PRC representatives made clear that they “would have absolutely nothing to do with the United Nations” if such an arrangement was put in place.

In the end, the U.S.-backed resolution was rejected by a vote of 61 to 51 at the same session where Resolution 2758 later passed. George H.W. Bush, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, noted that the United States “took a great deal of abuse” for its position during the debate.

Bush also warned that “the United Nations today crossed a very dangerous bridge” by expelling the ROC. He acknowledged the jubilation of the PRC’s supporters, but opined that “in calm reflection, I think we’re going to recognize that there’s been a very serious mistake.” Rebuking those who were rejoicing in a perceived defeat of the U.S., Bush retorted, “The United Nations lost by commanding the expulsion of a decent member nation. That’s what this battle was about.”

The ROC delegation did not stay to see its final defeat, but left after the U.S. proposal was voted down. After the ultimate passage of Resolution 2758, Chou declared, “We shall continue to struggle, with like-minded governments, for the realization of the ideals upon which the United Nations was founded, but which the General Assembly has now betrayed.”

With the vote, Taiwan was suddenly shut out of the entire U.N. system – not only the General Assembly and Security Council, but all of the United Nations’ subsidiary organs, including specialized agencies like the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), International Labor Organization (ILO), and the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as the U.N. climate change process. Taiwan has been excluded from these bodies even though they arguably cannot fulfill their stated functions without Taiwan’s participation.

Further complicating Taiwan’s position, in 2007 then-U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon affirmed that the United Nations recognized Taiwan “to be an integral part of the People’s Republic of China.” Ban’s comment attracted controversy, as that position is not explicitly stated in the text of Resolution 2758. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s status as a “province of China” has been enshrined in official U.N. policy ever since.

As China’s clout in the U.N. grew, Taiwan’s banishment became ever-more complete. In recent years, there has been an uptick in reports of Taiwanese not being allowed to visit U.N. buildings – a ban that even applies to Taiwanese journalists seeking to report on U.N. activities. As the Wall Street Journal reported in September, China even uses its position at the U.N. to implement a de facto ban on organizations that use “incorrect terminology for Taiwan.” According to the WSJ, a Colorado high school had to change an old article on their website to refer to “Taiwan, Province of China” before they were granted credentials to attend a U.N. meting.

Finding a Way Back?

Originally, the ROC clung fast to its right to represent all of China at the United Nations, which severely limited its prospects for rejoining the body. But over time, particularly after Taiwan’s democratization, Taipei began to pursue ways to be represented in the U.N. separately from – and alongside – the PRC. While Resolution 2758 is clear that Taiwan’s government cannot claim to represent “China,” Taiwanese officials – including Foreign Minister Joseph Wu – argue that it does not preclude Taiwan’s participation in the U.N. outside of holding the China seat. In essence, this brings us back to the same argument made in the unsuccessful U.S.-backed resolution of 1971.

China’s position is blunt: “The United Nations is an international organization composed of sovereign states. Taiwan as a province of China is completely not qualified and has no right to participate in it.”

However, statehood is not necessarily a requirement for participation in U.N. bodies. Palestine, for example, has permanent observer status at the United Nations despite not being a member state. The shift to pursue a different form of representation, below the level of full membership, allowed for more flexibility in Taiwan’s approach.

But the result remained largely the same.

Taiwan has made many efforts to rejoin the United Nations in some capacity. From 1993 to 2008, the ROC submitted 16 requests for participation in the United Nations, starting with bids for full membership in the early 1990s and finally just asking “to take part in unspecified U.N. ‘activities’,” as Reuters described a 2008 request. The U.N. has rejected every one of these requests.

Under President Ma Ying-jeou (2008-2016), Taiwan moved to a different tactic: trying to ensure “meaningful participation” in technical organizations like ICAO and the WHO. Here Ma scored a major success, with Taiwan gaining a long-coveted invitation to participate in the World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer in 2009. Taiwan received follow-up invitations every year through 2016.

Even this achievement, however, was based on a Memorandum of Understanding secretly negotiated in 2005 between the WHO and Beijing. The MoU, according to an outline that later leaked, strictly limited the body’s interactions with Taiwan. Most notably, the WHO agreed to submit any proposed contact with Taiwan for approval from Beijing, granting the PRC effective veto power over Taiwan’s engagement with the world’s top health body.

In other words, Taiwan’s participation in the WHO was subject to Beijing’s whim, and China used such invitations as a reward for “good behavior” from Taipei. That wasn’t a problem under the Ma administration, which was intent on smoothing out cross-strait relations. But then Tsai Ing-wen assumed the presidency in 2016, with a mandate to put the brakes on what her supporters saw as moves toward unification. Unsurprisingly, under Tsai, Taiwan’s invitations to the WHA stopped coming.

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the most vocal push yet for Taipei to have a seat at the WHO table, with explicit backing from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It wasn’t enough. Taiwan was forced to drop its request to attend the World Health Assembly’s 2020 meeting after realizing it still would not make the cut. Even the global health emergency of COVID-19 was not enough to budge the WHO – and Beijing – on the issue of Taiwan’s participation. A return to the U.N. proper, then, seems less likely than ever.

Still, Taiwan is determined to keep trying. In an op-ed published in The Diplomat in late August, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu argued that “Barring members of Taiwan’s civil society from the U.N. defeats the ideal of multilateralism, contravenes the U.N.’s founding principles of promoting respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, and hampers the U.N.’s overall efforts.”

“Taiwan is a force for good. Now is the time to bring Taiwan to the table and let Taiwan help,” Wu wrote.

In holding up the U.N.’s founding principles and pointing to Taiwan’s record “for good,” Wu echoed – perhaps unintentionally – the laments of the ROC and U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. on October 25, 1971. The problems that would come with excluding the ROC from the U.N. entirely were clear 50 years ago, but in the decades since no one has managed to solve them.