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PARIS — She wears a lapel pin with the Taiwanese and French flags intertwined – and that alone is a symbol. Tsai Ing-wen was President of Taiwan for eight years, until last May, and as such could not travel to most countries in the world that have diplomatic relations with Beijing, and not Taipei.
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Her visit to Paris on Wednesday was therefore a very delicate exercise in parallel diplomacy. Tsai did not meet with French government officials, but was received by the France-Taiwan friendship group in the Senate, and visited the Saclay university campus, which has technology cooperation alliances with Taiwan that she hopes to see strengthened.
I met her on Wednesday for an “exchange,” not an “interview,” which would make her visit seem too official: everyone is walking on eggshells for fear of provoking too strong a reaction from China.
Germany and the United Kingdom, which had agreed to have her visit, have since withdrawn the invitation. Before Paris, Tsai has been to Prague, where the Czech government has long been a supporter of Taiwan. On Thursday, she is visiting the European Parliament in Brussels, where she also has allies.
Taiwan is a democracy
When asked why she was in Europe, she simply replied that she had come to see some “friends.” But it’s clear that this is anything but banal, because while economic contacts are numerous, political relations are always discreet.
Tsai Ing-wen has hammered home a single message: Taiwan is a democracy, support for Taiwan is a strategic issue, and Taiwan must be defended against Beijing’s appetites. Her declarations were all the more forceful in the wake of new Chinese intimidation maneuvers in recent days, with an aircraft carrier and 153 Chinese planes’ flyovers around the island, a sign of discontent following a speech by Tsai’s successor as head of Taiwan, Lai Ching-te.
A failure of democracy in Taiwan would be a failure for the entire democratic world.
The former president does not fear a Chinese invasion, but the island is preparing for one. And with an unequal balance of power between 24 million inhabitants on one side and 1.4 billion on the other, she needs the support of those “friends” around the world.
Louvre values
From this point of view, Tsai isn’t particularly worried about the American election on November 5. She believes that support for Taiwan in Washington is bi-partisan, and that we will just have to get used to the approach of whoever is president after Joe Biden
But for the first time, Taiwan is also turning to Europe, which until now has been more discreet, or even indifferent, as suggested by a controversial remark by Emmanuel Macron last year about European countries not becoming “followers” of the U.S. China policy. suggested.
Tsai hopes that the Europeans will help make China understand that military conquest is unacceptable, if only because a significant proportion of their trade passes through the Taiwan Strait and they would suffer the consequences of a conflict.
But by publicizing her visit herself in a tweet in front of the Louvre Pyramid, Tsai Ing-wen is highlighting the “shared values” of freedom, democracy and human rights. She told me emphatically that a failure of democracy in Taiwan would be a failure for the entire democratic world. To paraphrase Lenin, Taiwan is democracy plus semiconductors — not bad for a small Pacific island.
