Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen begins her second term, a major cyclone is headed for India and Bangladesh, and Hungary passes an anti-transgender law.
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Tsai Ing-Wen’s Second Term Begins During a Week of Setbacks
Earlier today, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen was sworn in for her second term in a low-key ceremony in her presidential office in the capital Taipei. Addressing a socially-distanced crowd afterwards, she said that her government and the one in Beijing “have a duty to find a way to coexist over the long term and prevent the intensification of antagonism and differences.”
Tsai’s inauguration comes after a landslide election victory in January, when she beat her challenger by nearly 20 percentage points. Most recently, her government has received global praise for its handling of the coronavirus pandemic. So far, the country has only recorded 7 deaths, and has one of the lowest per capita death tolls in the world.
Repeating the words “peace, parity, democracy, and dialogue,” Tsai reiterated that Taiwan would reject being ruled by China in the same way Hong Kong is now. “We will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo. We stand fast by this principle,” Tsai said.
Hacked at home and sidelined at the WHO. It’s already been a rocky week for the leader as her office was reportedly the victim of a cyberattack. As part of the hack, documents were leaked to local news outlets that appeared to show political infighting as well as minutes from meetings discussing cabinet roles.
A more significant—if perhaps more expected—setback occurred earlier in the week, when the international community snubbed Taiwan at the World Health Assembly. Despite the Trump administration’s months-long campaign on Taiwan’s behalf, Taiwan was not restored to observer status—a position it last enjoyed in 2016. Foreign Policy’s Colum Lynch has the full story on the U.S.-China standoff at the conference, and why Taiwan will have to wait even longer for recognition.
U.S. betting on Taiwan’s chips. The Trump administration’s Taiwan strategy doesn’t end at the WHO. As the New York Times reports, Taiwanese hi-tech chip manufacturer Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) announced last Thursday it would open a factory in Arizona—a move the U.S. Department of Defense asked for in January (TMSC makes components for the F-35 fighter jet).
The next day, the U.S. Commerce Department declared a rule change, making it more difficult for the chip manufacturer to work with Huawei—the Chinese company seen as a major competitor in the advanced telecommunications market. The two moves both hurt Huawei and help bring Taiwan’s hi-tech supply chain closer to the United States.
Should Taiwan worry about an attack from China? A congressional report released last week warned that with “the world distracted by COVID-19,” China has “intensified its multi-faceted pressure campaign against Taiwan.” That doesn’t mean China is going to make a move against Taiwan, despite suggestions to do so from Chinese hawks.
Writing in Foreign Policy, Bonnie Glaser and Matthew Funaiole outline the many reasons why Beijing would think twice about taking on Taiwan, from the risk of a U.S. military confrontation to alienating countries in the region it needs on its side to execute its Belt and Road and Made in China 2025 initiatives. “Even if Xi did wish to reconsider his position, he would still face the hard reality that a strike against Taiwan would compromise China’s other ambitions,” they write.
What We’re Following Today
South Asia braces for cyclone. A major cyclone is due to make landfall in Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Odisha today, threatening mass flooding and “large scale damage,” according to the India Meteorological Department. Cyclone Amphan is expected to be largest storm to hit the region since the super cyclonic storm of 1999, which killed roughly 10,000 people. Both India and Bangladesh are attempting to evacuate millions from the storm’s path, a task made harder when storm shelters are being used as makeshift coronavirus quarantine sites. “We have just about six hours left to evacuate people from their homes, and we also have to maintain social distancing norms,” an Indian disaster management official told Reuters.
Transgender rights rejected in Hungary. Hungary has passed a law banning residents from legally changing their gender, threatening the rights of transgender people in a country that has already seen a slide into autocracy. Although Viktor Orban can now rule by decree, the law to define a person’s gender at birth only was passed by Hungary’s parliament the traditional way, with 134 votes for and 56 against. “This decision pushes Hungary back towards the dark ages and tramples the rights of transgender and intersex people. It will not only expose them to further discrimination but will also deepen an already intolerant and hostile environment faced by the LGBTI community,” said Krisztina Tamas-Saroy of Amnesty International.
Macron’s party loses majority. French President Emmanuel Macron’s political party, La République en Marche, has lost its parliamentary majority after seven defectors formed a new party: Ecology, Democracy, Solidarity. En Marche still holds a plurality of seats in the French National Assembly, and the defections leave the party just one seat short of an outright majority. After a short-lived surge at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic, Macron’s approval rating has settled down to around 40 percent in recent polls.
Keep an Eye On
Ads show 2020’s China focus. New advertising spending data has revealed what Trump administration statements have been highlighting for some time: the 2020 U.S. presidential election will have an unprecedented focus on China. Data compiled by HuffPost showed that between April 1 and May 15 over 99 percent of television ads for the Trump campaign mentioned China. By contrast, only approximately 25 percent of presidential campaign ads run by the Democratic party featured China. Writing in FP, Daniel Baer calls for a measured approach to China in the presidential election. “There is no need for bombast: The facts about the Chinese regime’s actions are damning enough,” he writes.
Mass animal slaughter planned in U.S. Chickens and pigs are being culled in huge numbers as the effect of the coronavirus pandemic leaves meat processors battling a cracked supply chain. Over a dozen large slaughterhouses and processing plants have closed in recent weeks as they became coronavirus outbreak clusters. Leah Garcés, president of Mercy for Animals, said official numbers are hard to come by but “what we know with certainty is that 2 million meat chickens [and] 61,000 laying hens,” have been killed on U.S. farms so far. The U.S. National Pork Producers Council has estimated that “up to 10,069,000 market hogs will need to be euthanized between the weeks ending on 25 April and 19 September 2020.”
Google is out of gas. Tech giant Google says it will no longer provide custom artificial intelligence or machine learning tools to help energy companies speed up oil and gas extraction. The move comes after the environmental group Greenpeace released a report highlighting the business contracts that tech firms Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have with major oil and gas companies, undermining the Silicon Valley firms’ carbon-reduction pledges. Although Google has adopted this new policy, the company said it would not break any existing contracts with its customers.
Odds and Ends
A judge in Norfolk, Virginia, has ruled that the telegraph used to broadcast distress signals from the Titanic can be salvaged from its position 2.5 miles under the Atlantic Ocean, despite objections from some archeologists. It is a loss for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which argued that the telegraph should be left on the ship, not least because it shares a place with “the mortal remains of more than 1,500 people,” court documents said. The judge, Rebecca Beach Smith, sided with the salvage company and said that retrieval of the telegraph “will contribute to the legacy left by the indelible loss of the Titanic, those who survived, and those who gave their lives in the sinking.”
That’s it for today.
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