India should take a stand on the security of the Taiwan Strait which is being increasingly challenged by China, says Taiwan’s new ambassador or representative at an event in Delhi.
“We believe India is a global power. India says it wants free, fair and open Indo-Pacific, it wants a rules-based Indo-Pacific, so on Taiwan Strait, on South China Sea, I think India should speak up its position clearly,” said Mumin Chen while launching a report Taiwan Beyond Semiconductors by the Council for Scientific & Defence Research (CSDR).
He is head of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India, which makes it the de-facto diplomatic mission.
The report he released says, “Despite the lack of formal diplomatic relations, amongst India’s key relationships in the complex geopolitical landscape of the Indo-Pacific, perhaps no other country represents greater unfulfilled potential than Taiwan. The overemphasis on rigid political factors and the temptation to find a silver-bullet solution have arguably been the greatest obstacles to incremental and functional cooperation between them.”
It was a point taken up by Mumin Chen who said “On Taiwan security issue, the Taiwanese people want peace and status quo … India should make such statements as a global power in its policy,” he said.
India in the past has endorsed Beijing’s One China policy but since 2011 has kept silent on that score. It has not found mention in any India-China bilateral document since then.
“The EU, Japan, and the US all say they uphold the security of the Taiwan Strait. From India, this kind of policy we will welcome. We will welcome India to be brave and say this to the whole world ensuring security of Taiwan Strait and Indo-Pacific,” he said.
Chen underscored that Taiwan is a democracy and “No other country will decide our fate,” a clear reference to China’s claim on the island.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait, where Chinese military belligerence has been growing, soared in 2022 when the then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei. This was the first such high-level visit by a senior US government official in the past three decades.
Beijing responded to the visit by launching joint military exercises and fired ballistic missiles over the island.
“We want peace and security in the Taiwan Strait. In the past decades why Taiwan became prosperous, technologically and economically strong? It is because we have a peaceful external environment. But who is trying to change that? We don’t challenge the status quo? Everything we do, including our military capability, is for self-defense,” said Chen, adding that India should make statements in support of Taiwan’s “dignity and security.”
On the issue of enhancement of bilateral ties between India and Taiwan, he said the relationship has not been able to utilize its full potential. The Taiwanese government, he said, plans to enhance the bilateral relationship with India and not just keep the ties restricted to semiconductors.
Chen said India and Taiwan can rest their relationship on three broad pillars of trade and investment, people-to-people exchanges and technological cooperation.
