Taipei, Taiwan — Forty-nine lawmakers from 24 countries gathered in Taiwan on Tuesday to discuss how China is raising tensions with the democratically ruled island and to assess the economic impact a potential conflict could have on the international community.  

The two-day summit was organized by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, a group that includes hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries who are concerned about how democracies deal with China. The conference brought the largest-ever foreign parliamentary delegation to Taiwan.  

In a keynote speech Tuesday, Taiwan President Lai Ching-te said China’s threat to any country is a threat to the world.  

“Taiwan will do everything in its power to support the ‘democracy umbrella’ with its democratic partners, so as to protect them from the threat of authoritarian expansion,” he told attending lawmakers.  

The rare meeting that has brought so many lawmakers from across the globe to Taiwan is part of a trend of foreign visits that has surged since former U.S. House speaker Nancy Pelosi visited the island in August almost two years ago.  

Despite having its own army, currency and democratic political system of government, Taiwan is not a member of the United Nations and has few formal diplomatic allies. China opposes any international engagement with Taiwan, which it regards as a part of its territory, and has been whittling away at the number of countries that have official ties with the island. Taiwan currently has 12 diplomatic allies.  

In response to the surge in international attention and visits, China has carried out a series of major military exercises around the island over the past two years and almost daily military harassment that has included a mix of fighter jets, naval and coast guard vessels and drones. It has also amped up its rhetoric that unification is inevitable. 

UN Resolution 2758 

At Tuesday’s conference, attending lawmakers adopted a model motion they say will pave the way for them to pass similar resolutions in their parliaments at home. The aim of the motion is to counter China’s interpretation of United Nations Resolution 2758 in their legislatures.  

U.N. Resolution 2758 was passed on Oct. 25, 1971 and is a key international agreement that Beijing uses to isolate Taiwan. Experts note, however, that the resolution only decided that the People’s Republic of China would replace the Republic of China, Taiwan’s official name, as a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It did not, however, determine Taiwan’s sovereign status.  

While some countries, such as the United States, have rejected China’s claim that the U.N. resolution supports its sovereignty claim over Taiwan, some foreign lawmakers attending the summit say the model resolution adopted by IPAC members could inform governments about the possibility of China using its interpretation of the U.N. resolution as a pretext to launch a potential military attack against Taiwan.

“We see the danger of China’s false interpretation of [the U.N. resolution] as bolstering the pretext for legality of any future attack or coercion against Taiwan, so we think talking about this issue will help bring the potential danger onto the radar of different governments,” Reinhard Butikofer, former chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with the People’s Republic of China, told VOA on the sideline of the summit.  

Cost of conflict 

On Tuesday, the summit also focused on the impact a potential conflict over Taiwan could have on countries around the world. Building on a campaign called “Operation Mist” that IPAC launched last September, the alliance hopes to push more governments to conduct assessments of the economic impact of a potential Taiwan Strait crisis on their countries. The Taiwan Strait is the body of water that separates Taiwan and China.  

“There is a strong desire among IPAC members to continue this operation because they believe people in their countries need to know the economic impact of a potential Taiwan Strait crisis,” Luke de Pulford, the executive director of IPAC, told VOA in Taipei.  

Ahead of Taiwan’s presidential and legislative elections earlier this year, Bloomberg Economics estimated that a conflict between China and Taiwan would decimate the global economy, costing as much as $10 trillion, which is equal to about 10% of the world’s GDP. 

Pressuring IPAC 

While the IPAC summit sought to raise international awareness of Taiwan’s plight, at least eight lawmakers from six countries, including Bolivia, Slovakia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, said they had received calls or texts from Chinese diplomats urging them not to attend the conference.  

According to an Associated Press report, some lawmakers received texts from Chinese diplomats asking whether they planned to attend IPAC’s annual summit in Taiwan while one lawmaker said Chinese diplomats asked the head of her political party to stop her from participating in the conference.  

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry condemned Beijing’s “despicable act” in a statement while de Pulford of IPAC said the Chinese government’s pressure campaign is simply “illegitimate.”

“The communications were not through formal diplomatic channels, but rather, they were harassing text messages and phone calls from junior Chinese attaches who felt that they could tell these lawmakers where they couldn’t travel to,” he told VOA.   

IPAC has faced repeated pressure from the Chinese government since its founding in 2020. Some members of the group have been sanctioned by the Chinese government while an indictment from the U.S. Justice Department showed that other IPAC members have been targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

In response to questions from VOA, the Chinese Embassy in Washington urged foreign lawmakers attending the summit to “stop exploiting the Taiwan question to interfere in China’s internal affairs and political manipulation for selfish gains.”  

“The Taiwan question is one hundred percent China’s internal affair, which no foreign forces have the right to interfere in,” the Chinese Embassy’s spokesperson Liu Pengyu told VOA in a written statement.  

Opportunity for international engagement 

Some experts say that while Taiwan’s attempts to engage with other countries usually face strong opposition from China, the summit is an important diplomatic channel for Taipei. 

“The significance of this meeting is that these are elected lawmakers who are intended to meet, talk, and discuss Taiwan and bring what they learn [in Taipei] back to their parliaments, with the hope of having concrete proposals of what can be done to help mitigate the odds of conflict happening in the Taiwan Strait and the odds of diminishing China’s aggression in this part of the world,” said Lev Nachman, a political scientist at National Taiwan University.  

Taiwan should use the summit to highlight the challenges it faces and how the threat from China affects Taiwan’s domestic politics, he added. 

“Taiwan needs to make sure that lawmakers at the summit are aware of what it means for Taiwan to exist in today’s world and what it means to be contested by China,” Nachman told VOA by phone.  

De Pulford from IPAC said he believes the summit in Taiwan could have an impact on how some countries engage with Taiwan.  

“A lot of the people attending the summit have strong relationships with their own governments, so they are able to leverage their own positions to pave the way for precedents such as ministerial meetings between Taiwan and other countries,” he told VOA.  
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BANGKOK — China’s powerful Politburo has endorsed the ruling Communist Party’s long-term strategy for growing the economy by encouraging more consumer spending and weeding out unproductive companies to promote “survival of the fittest.”

A statement issued after the meeting of the 24 highest leaders of the party warned that coming months would be tough, perhaps alluding to mounting global uncertainties ahead of the U.S. presidential election in November.

“There are still many risks and hidden dangers in key areas,” it said, adding that the tasks for reform and stability in the second half of the year were “very heavy.”

The Politburo promised unspecified measures to restore confidence in financial markets and boost government spending, echoing priorities laid out by a wider meeting of senior party members earlier in July. After that gathering, China’s central bank reduced several key interest rates and the government doubled subsidies for electric vehicles bought to replace older cars as part of the effort to spur growth.

The Politburo’s calls to look after low- and middle-income groups reflect pledges to build a stronger social safety net to enable families to spend more instead of socking money away to provide for health care, education and elder care. But it provided no specifics on how it will do that.

“This sounds promising on paper. But the lack of any specifics means it is unclear what it will entail in practice,” Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said in a commentary.

The party’s plans for how to improve China’s fiscal policies at a time of burgeoning local government debt were “short on new ideas,” he said.

Instead, the emphasis is on moving faster to implement policies such as the government’s campaign to convince families to trade in old cars and appliances and redecorate their homes that includes tax incentives and subsidies for purchases that align with improved efficiency and reducing use of polluting fossil fuels.

China’s economy grew at a 4.7% annual rate in the last quarter after expanding 5.3% in the first three months of the year. Some economists say the official data overstate the rate of growth, masking long-term weaknesses that require broad reforms to rebalance the economy away from a heavy reliance on construction and export manufacturing.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has prioritized developing industries using advanced technologies such as electric vehicles and renewable energy, a strategy that has made the country a leader in some areas but also led to oversupplies that are now squeezing some manufacturers, such as makers of solar panels.

The Politburo’s statement vowed support for “gazelle enterprises and unicorn enterprises,” referring to new, fast-growing companies and high-tech start-ups. It warned against “vicious competition” but also said China should improve mechanisms to ensure “survival of the fittest” and eliminate “backward and inefficient production capacity.”

The party has promised to help resolve a crisis in the property sector, in part by encouraging purchases of apartments to provide affordable housing and to adapt monetary policy to help spur spending and investment.

But the document issued Tuesday also highlighted longstanding concerns. The countryside and farmers need more support to “ensure that the rural population does not return to poverty on a large scale,” it said.

It also condemned what analysts have said is widespread resistance to fresh initiatives, saying that “formalism and bureaucracy are stubborn diseases and must be corrected” and warning that economic disputes should not be resolved by “administrative and criminal means.”

Chinese markets have not shown much enthusiasm for the policies outlined in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, the Hong Kong benchmark Hang Seng index sank 1.4%, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4%. The Hang Seng has fallen 4.3% in the past three months while Shanghai’s index is down 7.3%.
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Hanoi, Vietnam — A coal mine collapsed near Vietnam’s Ha Long Bay after heavy rain killing five people, state media reported Tuesday.

The accident happened Monday at a mine operated by the Hon Gai Coal Company, a unit of Vietnam’s state coal miner Vinacomin, VNExpress news site said. 

Early Tuesday morning a rescue team pulled out the bodies of the miners, who were aged between 23 and 47 years old.

According to disaster authorities, heavy rainfall was reported in Ha Long City, in northern Quang Ninh province, at the time of the accident. 

The torrential rains caused landslides, and several homes were flooded. 

Other parts of the country’s north have also experienced heavy rain for days, triggering flash floods and landslides.

On the outskirts of Hanoi, several communities have been living in floodwater for a week.

Scientists have warned that extreme weather events globally are becoming more intense and frequent due to climate change.

Deadly mining accidents are not infrequent in Vietnam, which despite ramping up its green credentials still relies heavily on coal-fired power plants.

Seven others have died in mine accidents in Quang Ninh province since April. 

Last year, accidents claimed at least 10 workers’ lives at Vietnam’s state-run coal and mining group, local reports said.
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