Where isolation makes the case for autonomy

Taiwan has received widespread praise for its assertive, and data-centric response to the global coronavirus outbreak. Although the small island nation is just 100 miles off the coast of the virus’s first epicenter, China, Taiwan has confirmed only 339 COVID-19 cases. Over three quarters of those cases contracted the virus abroad and were quickly ushered into a mandatory 14-day quarantine after returning to the country. But this quick, competent response has unveiled inequities in the country, particularly in how it treats immigrants. It has also had a political effect: allowing the country’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, to quickly gain popularity and assert with more force than ever Taiwan’s identity and ideal of autonomy and effective independence.

Taiwan’s rigorous airport screening, contact tracing, open data-driven information sharing, face mask production and rationing, and monitoring of those in quarantine – strategies devised in the wake of the 2003 SARS outbreak – have caught the admiring eyes of global leaders. Taiwan rapidly boosted its production of face masks immediately after detecting its first COVID-19 case in January, sending its military to work in mask factories. It now produces more than 10 million masks per week and allows each resident to purchase up to three masks every week. It has not implemented stringent social distancing guidelines but has advised against large gatherings, scuttling nationwide plans for the  upcoming Tomb Sweeping Festival, which has taken place for more than 2500 years. Taiwan does not conduct as many tests as other Asian countries, such as South Korea – opting to test only those who have contact with infected patients along with certain people who belong to vulnerable groups, like the elderly. But it has succeeded in limiting community transmission by taking proactive steps to curtail the virus before it became widespread: Taiwan began screening passengers from Wuhan on December 31 and says it informed the World Health Organization of potential human-to-human transmission at that time, only to be ignored. (To the growing displeasure of the international community, Taiwan is not part of the WHO due to Beijing’s refusal to allow Taiwan to participate independently of the People’s Republic of China.)

Taiwan’s model is being taken up around the world: “We’re going to follow, pretty closely, the Taiwanese model,” New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said on March 15, announcing a plan to prohibit mass gatherings in the country. That same day, Israel announced that it would adopt Taiwan’s strategy of tracking the phones of people in quarantine to make sure that they remain at home and fully isolated.

Taiwan has had resounding success rapidly disseminating accurate, digestible information about the virus to its aging but generally very technologically-savvy population. Su Tseng-chang, the popular premier, shares stern yet quirky and endearing PSAs on his Facebook page. The health ministry’s account posted memes featuring dogs that explain how to properly self-quarantine. The virus has made life here cautious but calm: the streets of Taipei are still busy, but now they’re dotted with masks; schools have reopened after delaying spring semesters, but they’re ready to go online again at a moment’s notice if needed. In an age of mass unpredictability, Taiwan’s leaders have won trust by being transparent about what they know and what they don’t.

But the response has also revealed splits in the social fabric.

For one thing, Taiwan’s attempts to control the coronavirus have prompted significant privacy concerns. Taiwan has utilized an existing act allowing for “disease control measures” to justify digital monitoring of those in quarantine, but tracking cell phones of private citizens falls into a legal gray area. Taiwan has also criminalized the spread of misinformation about the coronavirus and threatened those who spread false information online with fines of around $100,000. There has not yet been much public resistance from the virus-fearing public, but the measures raise questions over what qualifies as false information – and whether they have the potential to be abused in the future.

Foreign residents have reported mistreatment during the pandemic– in recent days, some businesses have asked foreigners for passport entry stamps at the door. This has come at the greatest cost to the nearly 800,000 Southeast Asian foreign workers in Taiwan, who are often targets of social and employment discrimination. Some have had trouble getting masks; some fear losing their jobs and being forced to return home. Unlike South Korea, whose hospitals refuse to check the immigration status of undocumented workers getting tested for the coronavirus, Taiwan continues to deport undocumented workers and overstayers, many of them from Southeast Asia, occasionally doing so after they have gone to the hospital to get tested. This has led to fears that they won’t visit the hospital if they show symptoms.

Like many countries around the world, Taiwan is turning inward, shutting off travel and closing borders to preserve its citizenry from the virus.

But the ways in which this nationalism will manifest itself are particularly complex in Taiwan, which was established in 1949 after Mao Zedong’s Chinese Communist party defeated the rival Chinese Nationalist Party, which retreated to the island of Taiwan, establishing the Republic of China, commonly known as Taiwan. Since then, the relatively small country of Taiwan has simmered under China’s thumb. China has vowed to respond with force should Taiwan formally declare independence. Taiwan receives only fitful official recognition from the international community and is often subject to Chinese efforts to exclude it from global governance organizations and trade agreements.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Taiwan’s political leaders have used this moment to assert its autonomy from China.

In February, Taiwan said it would repatriate the children of Taiwanese-Chinese couples from Wuhan on evacuation flights. After members of the Taiwanese public complained that those seats should be reserved for Taiwanese nationals, the decision was reversed the next day, leaving families to decide whether to stay together in the area where the virus was spreading fastest, or risk being separated indefinitely.

Taiwan’s government still officially refers to COVID-19 as 武漢肺炎, or “Wuhan pneumonia.”  The term has echoes of Donald Trump’s references to coronavirus as a “Chinese virus,” which critics have said aim to frame China and its citizens as a threat. But as Fulbright research fellow Lev Nachman noted on Twitter, in Taiwan’s case, the term is not used only to demonize Chinese people but also as “a form of resistance against the [Chinese Communist Party] and the WHO’s politicized exclusion and silencing of Taiwan.”

The term is indeed used in a different context than it is in much of the Western world – it’s a statement of Taiwan’s autonomy in going it alone, without China and the WHO, to combat the virus. But it cannot be entirely isolated from its discriminatory potential.

The virus may shape politics in the months to come. At the beginning of the year, Taiwan headed into a presidential election marked by stark polarization about the country’s relationship to China. In her reelection campaign, Tsai Ing-wen championed Taiwan's sovereignty and supported anti-Chinese protests in Hong Kong. Her challenger, Han Kuo-yu, was friendly to Beijing, and promised new peace treaties and trade pacts with the country. Tsai Ing-wen won with more than 57% of the vote.

Since the pandemic broke out, President Tsai Ing-wen's public approval ratings have soared. Her administration’s coronavirus response has helped her consolidate her position and strengthen her message on China. Officials have acted on the belief that China has misrepresented its data on coronavirus, vastly underestimating deaths from the disease, and endangering the world by doing so. Taiwan has also used its own country's swift response to the pandemic as evidence that the WHO needs to recognize Taiwan, if only so that it can more accurately assess global health statistics. She has consolidated support in part due to her distrust of China, along with her party’s ability to generate public trust through proactive measures and clear, transparent communication.

It is still far too early to tell what the long-term consequences of the epidemic might be for Taiwan's politics. But there is no question that the country's new president is using the occasion to develop a case for the country's autonomy. Whether this will work will not be clear until well after this pandemic passes.