In his buttonhole he wears a pin with the crossed flags of France and Taiwan, and this in itself is an important symbol. Tsai Ing-wen was president of Taiwan for eight years, until last May, and in this role she could not travel to most countries in the world that recognize Beijing and not Taipei.
His arrival in Paris on October 16 resulted in a particularly delicate exercise in parallel diplomacy. In fact, Tsai Ing-wen will not have official contacts with the French government, but she was received by the so-called France-Taiwan friendship group in the senate and visited the Saclay scientific campus, where she would like to see its collaboration with Taiwan strengthened.
I met Tsai Ing-wen for an “exchange”. Not an “interview”, because this would have given too official a character to his visit. In this matter everyone is walking on eggshells for fear of provoking too strong a Chinese reaction. Germany and the United Kingdom, which had agreed to the visit, later took a step back. Before arriving in Paris, Tsai Ing-wen visited the Czech Republic, a country that has long sided with Taipei. On October 17, the former president will visit the European Parliament, where he can count on several allies.
When I asked her what the meaning of her trip was, Tsai Ing-wen told me that she only came to France to meet some “friends”. But it’s clear that his move is anything but irrelevant. Economic contacts are numerous, but there are also discreet political relationships.
Tsai Ing-wen repeats a message endlessly: Taiwan is a democracy that has a strategic role, therefore it must be defended from Beijing’s appetites. A speech that is particularly incisive in the aftermath of yet another Chinese intimidating maneuvers, with warships and planes deployed around the island to demonstrate Beijing’s discontent after a speech given by Tsai Ing-wen’s successor, Lai Ching-te.
The former president does not fear a Chinese invasion, but thinks it is right to prepare for any eventuality. In light of an unbalanced balance of power between 24 million Taiwanese and 1.4 billion Chinese, Taiwan needs the support of its friends around the world, starting with the United States. From this point of view, Tsai Ing-wen is not worried about the American presidential elections which will be held on November 5, because she believes that support for Taiwan is bipartisan in Washington. We will simply have to get used to the style of the new president.
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The news is that Taiwan is now also turning to Europe, which in the past remained more discreet if not downright indifferent, as implied by a much-discussed phrase uttered by Emmanuel Macron last year to underline that the fate of Taiwan did not concern the Europeans . Macron later backtracked. Today Tsai Ing-wen hopes that the Europeans will point out to China that a military conquest of the island is unacceptable, also because a significant part of European trade passes through the Taiwan Strait and companies from the old continent would suffer serious consequences from a conflict.
Announcing her visit with a tweet written in front of the Louvre pyramid, Tsai Ing-wen cited “common values”: freedom, democracy and human rights. On October 16, the former president insistently repeated to me 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.
(Translation by Andrea Sparacino)
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