The Geopolitical Streisand Effect: The More China And The WHO Try To Silence Taiwan, The More Attention Its Success Fighting COVID-19 Gets

Last week, a full page advertisement appeared in the NY Times, that was crowdfunded by nearly 27,000 people (mostly from Taiwan), with the provocative line: "WHO can help? Taiwan." Taiwan's President Tsai Ing-wen posted a picture to her Facebook page:

The story behind the ad and the companion TaiwanCanHelp.US website is quite fascinating in its own right, and is reflective of the impressive digitally-aware political movement that has really grown up in Taiwan over the last decade. If you're unaware, over the last five years or so, Taiwan has been perhaps the most interesting experiment to watch in using technology to build more effective participatory government, pushed forward by a bunch of open source/open government activists who realized that working towards real solutions rather than pure partisan rancor, was a good way forward. And that shows in how this new campaign came about.

Much of it was designed in response to the WHO's continued efforts to box Taiwan out of the COVID-19 conversation, even as Taiwan seemed to be one of a very small number of countries which appeared to be dealing with the onslaught of COVID-19 quite well (and this was despite its closeness to China, and many people regularly travelling back and forth between Taiwan and China). The WHO's efforts to ignore Taiwan went really viral in late March when a major news program in Hong Kong, RTHK, interviewing Assistant Director-General at WHO Bruce Aylward, showed Aylward's ridiculously awkward attempts to avoid responding to questions about Taiwan:

The reporter asks whether or not the WHO would reconsider Taiwan's membership. Because Taiwan is not a member of the UN (because China still insists it's a "rogue province" rather than an independent country), it is not a member of the WHO and has to petition to attend meetings -- which is sometimes allowed, but frequently denied. Aylward first stares in silence, and then when asked again says he couldn't hear the question. She tries to ask again and he says "no, that's okay, let's move to another question." But the reporter asks again, and suddenly the Skype session "disconnects" (though you see Aylward move a bit right before the disconnect happens). The reporter calls him again, and this time instead of asking about WHO membership, just asks about how Taiwan has done regarding containing COVID-19. Aylward then gives a cringe-worthy response obviously trying not to respond to the actual question:

Well, we've already talked about China. And, you know, when you look across all the different areas of China, they've actually all done quite a good job.

And then he quickly ends the interview. But of course, much of China has not done a very good job at all, while Taiwan, which (contrary to what the Chinese will claim) is not a part of China has done a very good job. And that's kind of important. To make matters worse, the news station that aired the interview was reprimanded by Hong Kong officials which, of course drew even more attention to not just the interview, but the overall situation.

As a recent piece by Thomas Shattuck at the Foreign Policy Research Institute notes, this kicked off a Streisand Effect for Taiwan's successful handling of the pandemic, bringing a ton of new attention on the country.