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Taiwan coronavirus surge won’t advance its World Health Assembly cause: analysts
- Beijing will continue to block the island’s efforts to join the body, observers say
- Any mainland offers of help ‘likely to be seen as unification push’
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Beijing will not allow Taipei to use its surge in coronavirus cases as leverage in its long-running campaign to join an international health body, according to mainland analysts.
And with relations across the Taiwan Strait continuing to languish, there was little Beijing could do to help rein in the outbreak on the self-ruled island, observers said.
Taiwan is grappling with a sudden rise in community infections thought to be driven by a variant of the coronavirus first identified in Britain.
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In all, 333 new local cases were reported on Monday, taking the island’s total to 2,017, most of them in the Greater Taipei area in the north.
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Analysts on the mainland said the outbreak could not be used to rally international support for Taiwan to join the World Health Assembly, a body that meets once a year to set policy for the World Health Organization.
Renmin University international relations professor Shi Yinghong said Taiwan had largely contained the coronavirus pandemic in the past without being a part of the WHO.
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“China will not allow the island to join its yearly assembly just due to the recent infection spike,” Shi said.
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