Chapter 3 The Case of Reporters Without Borders
3.4 Taiwan’s Perspective on the Global Stage
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Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) that found Huang Qi’s imprisonment arbitrary, and highlighted a statement by the WGAD urging China to release Huang Qi. One intriguing part of the statement, which was published on the official website of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, detailed an exchange between UN human rights officials and Chinese authorities:
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has been in contact with the authorities regarding the case. The Government has responded to the communication leading to the adoption of the Opinion, but has not yet implemented it. More recently, the Government has informed the WGAD that Mr. Huang was being “provided with adequate medical treatment (…) that his illness is under control, and he is in sound state mentally. The alleged torture is inconsistent with facts.” (OHCHR, 2018)
We see here an example of United Nations officials pressuring Chinese authorities over human rights abuses due to a case report written by Taiwanese citizens and submitted to the UN indirectly through an NGO.
Seong-Phil Hong, chair-rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and one of the UN human rights experts credited with forming the UN’s expressed concern about Huang Qi, confirmed to me over email that the decision was made after consulting RSF’s model questionnaire.
Regarding the three tiers of advocacy influence I outlined in the analytical approach section in the first chapter of this thesis, it is clear this case should be classified as tier three, the tier with the sharpest focus and highest efficacy. This case study fits this tier because it is a time-specific piece of advocacy aimed at influencing the behavior of specific actors, and because we are able to rule out confounding variables.
3.4 Taiwan’s Perspective on the Global Stage
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The Huang Qi case offers a clear confirmation of the hypothesis of this thesis, that NGOs can act as middlemen for Taiwanese people to influence intergovernmental institutions from which they are excluded. In this case, Taiwanese citizens influenced operations and discourse at the United Nations by going through Reporters Without Borders. Because Taiwanese citizens are not allowed to work at the UN, they could not have played a direct or formal role. For example, a Taiwanese citizen could not have received the petition as a UN staffer, he or she could not have been involved in the UN’s decision-making process as a UN human rights worker in determining how to respond, and he or she could not have subsequently communicated to China on behalf of the UN.
However, as we have seen, it is possible for a Taiwanese citizen to work for an NGO that has consultative status in the UN, and to influence UN policy through work done under that NGO’s mandate. One crucial thing that makes this possible is Taiwan’s adherence to liberal democratic values surrounding human rights. This makes Taiwan a safe place for global civil society groups to operate, creating jobs for Taiwanese citizens that may involve indirectly interacting with intergovernmental organizations.
Beyond establishing that Taiwanese people are able to influence intergovernmental organizations through NGOs, it is important to ask the question, does this influence via NGOs advance Taiwan’s own foreign-policy interests? I argue that the answer is yes. Taiwan’s own security relies on support from countries with similar democratic values, such as the United States. In fighting to uphold those values, Taiwanese people are working to maintain the ideological infrastructure that keeps them safe.
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For example, as mentioned earlier in this thesis, Ian Easton, a scholar who once studied at National Chengchi University in Taipei, wrote an article titled “Strategic Standoff: The U.S.-China Rivalry and Taiwan,” for a think tank called The Project 2049 Institute, which describes itself as “a nonprofit research organization focused on promoting American values and security interests in the Indo-Pacific region.” In the 2016 article, Easton articulates the affinity many foreign policy professionals in Washington feel towards countries that support liberal democratic values: “PRC diplomats often assert that China is big and Taiwan is little, therefore constructive relations with China matter more, and it is in the American interest to compromise on Taiwan. This is a false argument. When it comes to freedom, human rights, and quality of government, Taiwan towers over China” (5).
The reason for this logic, posits Easton, lies in trust and comradery forged through common political values. “Experience has shown senior U.S. policymakers time and time again that nations that share democratic values are the best partners and worth defending. Common values generate common interests, which are the basis for making a common cause in addressing global challenges” (Easton 2016, 5).
A specific example of Taiwan’s adherence to liberal democratic values playing a crucial role in ensuring continued support from the United States can be found in the Taiwan Assurance Act, introduced to the United States Senate on March 26, 2019, and to the United States House of Representatives on April 1. A portion of the act’s text reads as follows:
It is the sense of Congress that the Department of State’s guidance regarding relations with Taiwan ... should be crafted giving due consideration to the fact that Taiwan is governed by a representative democratic government that is peacefully constituted through free and fair
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elections that reflect the will of the people of Taiwan, and that Taiwan is a free and open society that respects universal human rights and democratic values. (U.S. Senate, 2019)
Because Taiwan’s survival depends heavily on support from the United States, and the United States seeks to defend liberal democratic values around the world, Taiwan’s adherence to human rights plays a huge role in ensuring Taiwan’s continued sovereignty.
In the case of RSF’s Taipei office advocating for Huang Qi, not only is Taiwan benefiting by its citizens framing global human rights discourse around Taiwan’s own values, but also it is gaining an ideological victory at China’s expense, as China faces being publicly shamed over its heavy-handed treatment of its own dissidents. By upholding human rights through NGOs, Taiwan maintains immeasurable soft power that is crucial to its own survival.
China has a very different idea of what should constitute human rights. Its vision includes economic and public safety privileges but rejects the ideas of many of the political rights espoused by the liberal world order, such as the freedom of people to choose their own leaders and the freedom of people to access uncensored information.
As Ted Piccone writes for Brookings, China has emerged as an active member of the UN Human Rights Council, participating with the aim to “1) block international criticism of its repressive human rights record, and 2) promote orthodox interpretations of national sovereignty and noninterference in internal affairs that weaken international norms of human rights, transparency, and accountability” (2018).
In trying to muzzle voices within the United Nations that are critical of China’s human rights record, China has even sought to get NGOs expelled. Interestingly, RSF
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itself has come under pressure from Beijing within the UN. Coppin told me in our interview over Skype on April 26, 2019, that about two years ago China requested that UN authorities eject RSF from the list of NGOs with consultative status at the UN.
“China has been trying to take this status away from us because of the way we talk of Taiwan and Hong Kong,” Coppin said. According to him, Chinese dignitaries told UN officials: “Either you ask RSF to quit talking of Taiwan as a country, or you take away this consultative status.”
Coppin clarified that RSF does not take a position on Taiwanese independence or Hong Kong sovereignty, but simply ranks them differently on the press freedom index because the press freedom situation is drastically different between those three places.
The index itself states that it ranks countries and regions. This avoids taking a stand about whether certain territories count as countries. Coppin said that RSF responded to the UN’s inquiries and clarified that RSF takes no position on the Taiwan and Hong Kong issues. RSF did not hear back again about the matter. Coppin said that RSF does not know whether or not they are in fact in danger of being thrown out of the UN.
China’s pressuring the UN to eject RSF shows that the ideological infrastructure that underpins human rights at the United Nations is under attack from China, which seeks to reshape the UN in its own image, deleting the influence of actors outside state control. It will be interesting to watch the future of civil-government relations at the UN, and whether China will ever succeed in expelling civil society actors.
In the case of RSF and its Taipei bureau, we are able to observe an interesting example of Taiwan playing a role in jockeying at the UN for the future of the meaning of human rights. Citizens of Taiwan, a country not recognized by the UN, are working to
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uphold ethical norms that are threatened by China. By working to uphold rights such as freedom of speech, assembly, information, and religion, Taiwan is in effect undermining China’s goal of rewriting the definition of human rights to adhere to its authoritarian vision.
Because RSF focuses on media freedom and frequently publishes content on the web, it is an influential player in shaping the global narrative. Constructivism maintains that narratives, especially surrounding sensitive topics like human rights, matter a great deal in the global discourse. “If the social world is linguistically constructed and reproduced through the act of communication, then the words we use and the narratives that we invoke matter a great deal to the social reality that is created” (Sterling-Folker 2013, 132).
Within the global contestation over the narrative of human rights, we are also able to see a sense of camaraderie between the people of Taiwan and their international counterparts who are fighting in the UN to preserve human rights. RSF has employees not just from France but also from Taiwan and other countries around the world. They come together at RSF to fight for a common cause, to work for something they believe in. This partnership is one of many dividends paid by Taiwan’s soft power and adherence to democratic values.
3.5 Conclusion
In this chapter I first examined the history of RSF, its working mandate, and how the organization has developed over the years. I then detailed the NGO’s opening of its Taipei branch, and what this signaled about the organization’s concerns about press freedom in the region. I then gave an overview of the activities taken up by staff
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members at the Taipei office, before moving into a discussion of the case study of advocacy done for Chinese imprisoned journalist Huang Qi. Using both RSF’s statements and those from the UN, I was able to investigate the concept of Taiwanese citizens using NGOs as a way to influence international institutions.
By examining the activities of RSF’s Taipei bureau, and specifically its action in petitioning the UN on the case of Huang Qi, we are able to confirm the hypothesis, that Taiwanese people are able to use NGOs to influence intergovernmental organizations from which they’re excluded, as well as to affect global discourse surrounding issues such as human rights. RSF’s Taipei bureau offers evidence that civil society groups in Taiwan do not merely reflect Taiwan’s own political values, but also project those values onto the world stage in a way that benefits Taiwan’s foreign policy interests and national security.
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