China appears to be making a concerted effort to prevent European lawmakers from engaging with Taiwanese politicians, as it seeks to isolate the island from potential political backers.
According to the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), a grouping of MPs from around the world focussed on issues related to China’s ascendancy, Chinese ambassadors in a number of European nations have been calling lawmakers for meetings and urging them not to host Taiwanese officials or speak to them during visits to the island.
The flurry of activity appears to have started when Taiwanese vice president Hsiao Bi-khim addressed an IPAC summit in Brussels last November, drawing a sharp response from Beijing. At the conference held in the European parliament building, Bi-khim urged European MPs to boost trade and security ties with Taiwan.
Though Taiwan has its own democratically-elected government, China claims sovereignty over the island and has threatened to “reunite” it with the mainland by force if necessary. Beijing has for decades forced its trade partners to sign up to some form of “One China” policy, which recognises China’s claim to Taiwan and accepts that the administration in Beijing is the only legal Chinese government.
Bi-khim’s speech was a significant moment for Taiwan, as the first address delivered by a senior member of the Taiwanese government in a foreign parliament. Beijing responded by accusing European lawmakers of hosting “Taiwan independence” figures to conduct “separatist activities” in its buildings.
In November and December last year, Chinese officials began pushing “legal advice” on EU nations, either through officials posted in various European missions or through local embassies, telling them their own border laws required banning entry to politicians from Taiwan.
The advice appeared to relate to the Schengen Borders Code – the law which lists conditions for entry of non-EU nationals into border-free areas in Europe that allow free movement between 29 participating countries. It states that entrants must “not [be] considered to be a threat to the public policy, internal security, public health or the international relations of any of the member states”. Chinese officials reportedly implied that allowing entry to Taiwanese politicians to EU nations would violate that clause and create rifts between those countries and Beijing.
Taiwan’s only formal diplomatic ties in Europe are with the Vatican, but countries from Britain and France to Lithuania and Poland have disregarded Beijing’s complaints to allow visits by acting or former senior Taiwan officials. Recent years have seen a shift where several Western nations have come together to advocate for Taiwan’s democratic values.
Romanian lawmaker Cristian Ghinea tells The Independent a political storm erupted in Bucharest after he visited Taiwan last year and then Brussels in November. The senator says he has been facing targeted attacks from Chinese officials over his calls for Romania to resume bilateral ties with Taiwan and open an office representing Romanian interests in Taipei.
Ghinea, who was part of the six-member parliamentary delegation to Taipei in August last year, says the Chinese embassy in Bucharest went on a full PR offensive both online and in-person, including criticism of both him personally and the current Romanian leadership. He says this included propaganda articles published in Romania claiming that China will rule the world and that the “One China” policy should be respected.
Ghinea says that if anything the campaign “made me more willing to be involved in the issue”.
“I’m a true believer in democratic values and I care about Taiwan as a democracy,” he says. “I wrote some articles reminding Romanians that we lived under dictatorship [with the Ceaușescu regime], and now we are asking 23 million Taiwanese to live under the dictatorship of the Communist Party.”
Luke de Pulford, one of the co-founders of IPAC, says the pressure campaign from China reached new heights after the Brussels summit.
“There have been a number of requests for meetings between IPAC co-chairs and the respective ambassadors (of China) in their countries, and I was briefed on one of those meetings,” he tells The Independent, without disclosing which European nations were facing immediate pressure. IPAC’s co-chairs include MPs from the EU, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and Japan.
“What they said was that every time they tried to raise some other matter in the meeting, all the ambassador wanted to talk about was that they were free to visit Taiwan Island if they wanted, but they should not meet with senior politicians while they were there, and they certainly shouldn’t invite them over here (to European soil),” Pulford says.
“So it’s very clear to me that this is a message which has been given to different Chinese diplomatic missions that they have to get out to lawmakers.”
China now routinely objects to visits by foreign politicians to Taiwan for meetings or summits, including those led by IPAC. China last year also strongly objected to a delegation from the European parliament visiting Taiwan.
African nations like Malawi and the Gambia were forced to drop out of IPAC’s 2024 summit due to alleged diplomatic coercion. In November last year, several African lawmakers were not able to attend the Taiwanese vice-president’s address at the European parliament, Pulford says.
“Certainly in one case they were not able to attend because their foreign ministry would not clear them for travel under pressure from China,” he says.
China has also pressed European countries to follow the UN’s example and bar all Taiwanese people from government buildings, The Guardian reported. Taiwan is not a member of the UN and its citizens are unable to attend UN events as representatives of Taiwan.
Ghinea says that while China goes to great lengths to isolate Taiwan, it should be seen as an issue that concerns all countries in Asia and beyond. He compares it to the Ukraine war, both as a conflict that might embolden Xi Jinping’s own territorial ambitions and as an example of a crisis that also has huge impacts on neighbouring countries – like Romania itself.
“If (Russian president Vladimir) Putin gets a free hand in Ukraine, that would encourage Xi to do the same in Taiwan and then even beyond Taiwan, because China has conflicts with the Philippines, with Vietnam,” he says.
The Independent has reached out to China’s foreign ministry for a comment.
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