Except that COVID was the result of poor containment policies by the Chinese, who then fought tooth and nail to avoid any culpability, including flat out lying and gaslighting the WHO, whereas Taiwan was a model to emulate in terms of pandemic response.

I’d feel much safer with Taiwan in the WHO and China out, if one had to pick sides.

Thats all the more reason for WHO to cooperate. China is the one who needs pandemic response cooperation/help. Their government would absolutely compromise world health by backing out over a petty insult like acknowledging Taiwan.

China being in the WHO didn't help with pandemic avoidance or response. In fact they used their position within the WHO to spread misinformation and bully the rest of the world. Their government is compromising world health, and giving the world absolutely no benefit from their inclusion.

You think it is good to "throw Taiwan under the bus" all for the sake of some organization being able to monitor a disease? Sad.

Following your logic, would it would be OK to "throw Canada under the bus" if it allowed some international organization to more easily monitor, um say their oil exports?

Taiwan did an excellent job dealing with COVID. China did a poor job. WHO should you listen too?

> keeping ~17% of the world's population under their health/monitoring umbrella

This has not seriously happened.

Yeah... I guess thats an issue. WHO cooperating with China when push comes to shove may be a total fantasy.

I fully agree, thats why we let russia head U.N. Security Council, its the only way to appease them and avoid any conflicts!!1

While we are at it putting Saudi Arabia in UN Women’s Panel in 2017 to 'promote gender equality and the empowerment of women' worked so well we might as well put them on Women's Rights Commission. We need to ask ourselves who is better than SA, other than russia of course, to head this commission??!?!

It's not strategic, more legal, as TW is a province of One China represented by PRC under UN and by association WHO charter. No amount of US * and western wanking and plotting to get TW into WHO (not as sovereign but even observer status) will work without PRC agreeing. And PRC will only agree if TW is cooperative on cross strait dynamic, i.e. last time TW was "allowed" to as "observe" at WHO with PRC ascent is when PRC-TW relations were good because TW affirmed the 92 consensus. When Tsai didn't uphold consensus, that "subnational" privilege was revoked by the PRC who has the procedural right to just lol no at the UN, without even wasting the security council veto, but that's always a trump card.

* US because the campaign to get TW included in UN bodies like WHO or ICAO first started floating in US think tanks a couple years ago when covid gave platform to China hawks, Senators like Cruz made it domestic US politics issue by introducing bills to get Biden to be tough on China by enhancing TW’s international participation, who then tried to coordinate via G7/western support. Queue the last couple years of US think tanks and politicians conjuring all sorts of propaganda and "this one neat" trick to get TW included as WHO observer when the only party that can do so is PRC.

TBH the goal was never to get TW in UN orgs - it’s procedurally simply not going to happen. It’s mostly a performance for domestic and western multilateral tough on PRC politics like articles trying to kick Russia off security council. Only the most useful idiot thinks that's remotely possible.