The Invisible Nation

The convening of the 79th Session of the United Nations General Assembly is a moment to mark the cause of Free China, or Taiwan. A documentary released last year about Taiwan called the country an “Invisible Nation,” but its non-status at the United Nations owes more to those who have eyes only for Beijing than to its own transparently meritorious case. They have forsaken China’s only democracy, the Republic of China on Taiwan.The Republic of China dreamed of by Sun Yat-sen was animated by the hope that he articulated in The New York Sun, that the “tyrant of Pekin will hurry from the country quite as ignominiously as ever a culprit left his former haunts.” While a vibrant island democracy has arisen between Taipei and Tainan, a different despot — Xi Jinping — rules from the Forbidden City. His rapaciousness is felt everywhere in the Pacific, and especially in Taiwan. The free Republic’s parlous state at the United Nations owes to General Assembly Resolution 2758, which recognized Communist China as “the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations” and removed “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek” from the United Nations. No mention, though, was made of Taiwan’s fate as a member of the world body. Yet one cannot now enter the Turtle Bay compound with a passport reading “Taiwan.”Textual niceties have not stopped China from using Resolution 2758 as a cudgel to keep the nearly 24 million Taiwanese invisible, and worse, at the United Nations and its affiliated organs. President Nixon’s One China policy — a position shared by Chiang, who dreamed to his last of returning to the mainland — needs updating in this age of renewed revanchism, with Communist China the senior partner in an axis comprising Iran, Russia, and North Korea.Secretary General António Guterres is on the wrong side of this fight, as he is in the battle between the Jewish state and its foes. Earlier this month he took himself to Beijing for something called the “China-Africa Cooperation Summit.” Domination would be a better word than “cooperation.” Posing with Mr. Xi, Mr. Guterres took to X to declare that the “China-Africa partnership is a pillar of South-South cooperation.” Taiwan is not entirely bereft of friends. The Sun’s A.R. Hoffman, back in New York after visiting Taiwan on a press trip sponsored by the Republic of China, swung by a press conference held Thursday outside the United Nations. Aides of six allies of the Republic briefed the press on a letter they, along with the representatives of three other nations submitted to Mr. Guterres’s office urging support for Taiwan. Where, apart from China, were the other 183 nations?Ambassador Inga Rhonda King of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, announced under blue skies that she was proud to undertake a “pilgrimage in the name of Taiwan.” She called the Taiwanese “exemplary global citizens” and trumpeted the semiconductor savants as a “technological juggernaut.” She was joined by emissaries from Belize, Palau, Saint Lucia, Guatemala, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands. It could be said that being excluded from the United Nations is not the worst fate. The resolution adopted on Wednesday against Israel, tests another low. As does the elevation of the Palestinian Arabs, who, nearly a year to the day after the horrors of October 7, find themselves rewarded with enhanced prerogatives at the UN. Taiwan and Israel — beacons of democracy, freedom, and prosperity— belong to a more honored club than the United Nations.

The Invisible Nation

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