How Taiwan Beat COVID-19 With Transparency and Trust
On January 21, a Taiwanese woman working in Wuhan who had complained of a fever after flying into Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport became the island’s first confirmed case of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus. The United States had reported its first confirmed coronavirus case just hours earlier, while Japan had confirmed its first case five days prior. The Taiwanese woman became the world’s first non-Chinese national to be diagnosed with the virus and, as the disease started to spread outside of China, Taiwan braced itself for an outbreak.
Nearly six months later, Japan has achieved one of the world’s lowest COVID-19 death rates but has confirmed over 18,000 cases; in March, Japan and the International Olympic Commission announced the postponement of the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. The United States has confirmed nearly 3 million cases and over 130,000 deaths as new cases continue to surge throughout the country.
Taiwan, which lies about 150 kilometers east of China, could have easily suffered a similar fate. In January, experts predicted it could see the world’s second-worst outbreak after China. But the island has confirmed just 449 cases and seven deaths since the start of the pandemic, most attributed to Taiwanese citizens returning from abroad; there has not been a case of local transmission of the virus since April 12. In the process of becoming a model of pandemic containment, Taiwan has assertively sought to provide assistance to other countries suffering their own outbreaks, simultaneously bolstering its international image at a time when the Chinese Communist Party, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan despite never having governed it, has intensified its campaign to exclude Taiwan and its 23 million citizens from global organizations and dialogues with the aim of eventually ruling over it.
“This success is no coincidence,” Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen 蔡英文 wrote in an April TIME op-ed. “A combination of efforts by medical professionals, government, private sector and society at large have armored our country’s defenses.”
Taiwan had planned its coronavirus response long before reporting its first case — or before it even knew what the virus was. On the morning of December 31, a Centers for Disease Control (CDC) doctor logged onto PTT, a Taiwanese equivalent of Reddit, and found a post containing a screenshot of messages from Chinese doctor Li Wenliang 李文亮 detailing “seven cases of SARS” originating from a seafood market in Wuhan. Later that day, Taiwan sent an email to the World Health Organization (WHO) noting that, according to the messages, the Wuhan cases had been “isolated for treatment” — an indication of potential human-to-human transmission of the virus, but a warning Taiwan maintains was ignored.
Health officials, concerned by the virus, immediately began screening all incoming travelers from Wuhan. In early January, with Taiwan just days away from a presidential election, the government quietly established its Central Epidemic Command Center to facilitate inter-ministerial cooperation in prevention measures. On January 21, when Taiwan confirmed its first case of COVID-19, Taiwan was ready. Its early steps allowed Taiwan not only to retain societal normalcy throughout the pandemic — the island has not had a lockdown, schools have never shut, and restaurants and bars have never been ordered to close — but also to vault itself into an unprecedented prominence on the global stage that may be key to its future sovereign survival.
“Our resilience stems from our willingness to unite to surmount even the toughest obstacles,” Tsai wrote in her April op-ed. “This, above all else, is what I hope Taiwan can share with the world: the human capacity to overcome challenges together is limitless.”
Tsai concluded with the phrase “Taiwan can help”: a slogan that has become a rallying cry as the island has donated millions of surgical masks and PPE sets to other countries, pushed to attend May’s World Health Assembly as an observer, and taken pride in its own prevention success and newfound global profile.
Audrey Tang 唐鳳, Taiwan’s digital minister, pointed to a sticker displaying the phrase on her laptop during an interview in her office. “It means something now,” she said, smiling.
Taiwan has received global praise for its government’s coronavirus prevention measures, which included aggressive monitoring and quarantine regimens for incoming travelers but were implemented with a commitment to calm, transparent central messaging that assured the maintenance of a strong sense of trust between authorities and the public.
Taiwanese voters are highly engaged with the nation’s democracy; its January presidential election, in which Tsai convincingly won a second term, saw a record turnout of 74.9%. In the year before the vote, Tsai bolstered her popularity by becoming a strong voice in defense of Taiwan’s sovereignty, pledging to protect the people of Taiwan from suffering a similar fate as their neighbors in Hong Kong. Her administration also made strides to communicate with and engage voters; in 2019, Tsai appointed a popular veteran politician as premier and named several former activists in Taiwan’s 2014 Sunflower Student Movement to key posts in her political party. These were key concessions to voters who, since the island transitioned away from decades of martial law, have deeply valued Taiwan’s democratic ideals and the civic institutions which have grown from them, including a world-class national health care system and a commitment to data-driven governance that became key factors in the island’s response to the coronavirus.
After confirming its first COVID-19 case, Taiwan acted swiftly by banning travel from China, tracking the phones of people in home quarantine, tracing all contacts of COVID-19 patients and sending text alerts to anyone potentially exposed to a positive case. The government also ramped up its production of surgical facemasks, sending soldiers to factories to increase the daily output from 1.88 million to about 20 million by the end of June.
These were part of a list of 124 action items, produced by Taiwan’s CECC in February, that have been implemented in Taiwan and emulated globally by leaders in countries like New Zealand, which said it would follow Taiwan’s lead in restricting mass gatherings, and Israel, which cited Taiwan’s success in deciding to use phone tracking technology to enforce home quarantines.
The success of these measures has allowed Taiwan to shift its focus from pandemic containment to a campaign of health diplomacy that has caught the attention of the world, from Taiwan’s 15 formal diplomatic allies to countries throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America with close ties to China. To Tang, this cooperation is the essence of the phrase “Taiwan can help” — and it starts not only with Taiwan’s central response, but with the trust forged between government and the people.
“At the root [of Taiwan’s success] is the social mobilization that stemmed out of a collective memory, a traumatic memory of the 2003 SARS incident,” Tang said.
Taiwan’s central pandemic response was informed deeply by the 2003 SARS outbreak, which took 73 lives in Taiwan and led to Taipei’s Hoping Hospital being quarantined for two weeks. In each year since, hospitals have undergone pandemic readiness exercises. This memory also stuck with the people of Taiwan, who quickly snapped into habitual handwashing, social distancing, and mask wearing once COVID-19 was first reported in the country.
Taiwanese officials have been diligent in ensuring the public remembers its own role in the island’s coronavirus success story, said Chi Chun-huei 紀駿輝, a professor at Oregon State University’s College of Public Health and Human Sciences. He noted that health minister and CECC head Chen Shih-chung 陳時中 has made a habit of saying Taiwan’s success has come down to a mixture of sound government policy and the cooperation and creativity of the people of Taiwan — a line that was repeated by former vice president Chen Chien-jen 陳建仁, himself an epidemiologist and health researcher, when he stepped down and returned to academia in May.
“The government has been transparent and very responsive in communicating with the public,” Chi said. “That trust is reinforced by the successful outcome. People in Taiwan, they see how people in other countries are being confined to their homes, being restricted in their daily activities. They feel they are so fortunate.”
Chen, the health minister, continues to give daily press briefings and has become one of Taiwan’s most popular public officials due to his tendency to provide lengthy, calm answers to questions from reporters and the public, ensuring they remain informed. “The daily press conference, even if you just listen to it in the background, it’s kind of by osmosis, everyone becomes amateur epidemiologists,” Tang said. Su Tseng-chang 蘇貞昌, the premier, began sharing quirky, self-deprecating memes reminding citizens to wear masks and refrain from panic buying, while the health ministry adopted a cartoon shiba inu “spokesdog” to educate people on best practices. Tang has called this the “Taiwan model,” which she said “will not distance the government too much from civil society” and instead ensure that “it will be working with the people, not for the people only. I think that’s the message that resonates.”
This response — and the cooperative spirit that motivated it — has given both Taiwan and its people a newfound swagger both on the international stage and in their own identities. “People have more confidence with themselves,” Chi said. “Before, people and government had an inferiority complex. They are now able to see other nations as equal.”
Tsai’s election in 2016 brought an end to eight years of close cooperation with China under her predecessor, Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九, and ushered in an era of a Taiwan eager to assert its own sovereignty and reduce its dependence on its western neighbor. But Beijing, perceiving Tsai as desiring Taiwan’s eventual independence, severed all official ties with Taiwan and launched a campaign of poaching its diplomatic allies, sending military planes and vessels near its territorial boundaries, and pressuring international organizations to exclude Taiwan.
Taiwan responded by donating over 50 million face masks to dozens of countries, part of a public health diplomacy campaign that has won plaudits from foreign leaders, including Japan’s Shinzo Abe. The gambit ensured that perception of Taiwan “warmed up significantly and publicly among foreign governments,” said Wen-Ti Sung 宋文笛, a scholar of Taiwanese politics at the Australian National University, although he noted it remains uncertain how much the global public has become aware of Taiwan’s efforts.
In May, Taiwan pushed to attend the World Health Assembly as an observer before dropping its bid over fears it would lose a floor vote. But it gained broad support in the process from the United States, Australia, the European Union and Japan, which explicitly stated its support for Taiwan’s WHA bid in its Diplomatic Bluebook for the first time this year, calling Taiwan an “extremely important partner.”
“Over the past four years, Taiwan’s star has risen,” said Shihoko Goto, deputy director for geoeconomics and senior associate for Northeast Asia at the Wilson Center. “All of these countries that were reluctant to back Taiwan are now supporting Taiwan publicly.”
Taiwan’s moment in the sun is rooted firmly in its strong ties with the United States, which announced a joint COVID-19 cooperation plan with Taiwan in March and launched a Twitter campaign to support Taiwan’s WHA bid. But the U.S. is now in the process of withdrawing from the WHO, signaling the dawn of what Sung called “a fractured world of nonpolarity” — one which could harm Taiwan but, he said, could also allow it to “receive more international space.”
The Trump administration, hawkish on China, can be supportive of Taiwan beyond even what Taiwan is comfortable with, Goto said, creating a situation where the Tsai administration, hesitant to provoke an aggressive Beijing, is “putting on the brakes and saying, ‘We want the status quo.”
“Tsai has been steady in this very difficult situation,” she said.
China, which has never ruled out the use of force to take over Taiwan, has increased military activity near Taiwan’s territorial boundaries in the wake of the island’s successful coronavirus response. In June, Taiwan’s defense ministry said Chinese military planes had entered its air defense zone six times in a single week. Taiwanese leadership has never expressed a desire to declare independence — a move which could trigger a Chinese military invasion — but the Tsai administration has become increasingly wary of cyberattacks and media disinformation campaigns allegedly originating from China.
Tsai has attempted to strengthen Taiwan’s regional standing by prioritizing its ties with neighbor states, including Japan, Australia and South and Southeast Asian countries — part of her signature New Southbound Policy, aimed at diversifying Taiwan’s cultural and trade links and decreasing its economic dependence on China.
The COVID-19 pandemic has given Taiwan a larger opportunity to foment goodwill and “bolster its presence in Southeast Asia, even as China continues to vie for influence” in the region, said Ratih Kabinawa, a PhD candidate focused on Taiwan’s foreign policy in Southeast Asia at the University of Western Australia. Although Taiwan has made strides in securing trade and infrastructure deals in the region, it has long struggled to parse out “one-China policies” that differ among each state in the area, some of which are more hesitant to forge public agreements with Taiwan. “There is no one recipe for all in dealing with one-China policy in Southeast Asia,” she said.
But governments have publicly praised Taiwan’s pandemic response while others, such as Indonesia, emulated elements of Taiwan’s prevention plans. Taiwan’s donations of masks and personal protective equipment, meanwhile, have been “welcomed” throughout the region, Kabinawa said.
Taiwan has also won the attention and admiration of people throughout Asia — including in Japan, where Tang, the digital minister, became an online celebrity due to her support of a data-driven approach to rationing and locating masks, all done via open-source programs published online. Tang, along with Taiwan’s g0v civic technology community, contributed to the development of Tokyo’s COVID-19 information website.
Taiwan has long held a limited global profile. Politically, it is often defined by its relations with China; culturally, it’s known mostly for bubble tea. Its COVID-19 response, Tang said, not only reinforced its commitment to domestic democracy and transparency along with global goodwill, but provided a blueprint for societies throughout the world simultaneously fighting a health pandemic and the slow creep of global authoritarianism.
“Just the existence of the Taiwan model,” she said, “serves as an inspiration.”
This story first appeared in Japanese in Newsweek Japan’s July 21, 2020 magazine.
