India especially important to counter China’s challenge: Taiwan foreign minister

Taipei: India is “especially important” in efforts by like-minded countries across the Indo-Pacific and groupings such as the Quad to counter China’s challenge to the global rules-based order and its expansionism, Taiwan’s foreign minister Lin Chia-Lung said on Wednesday.

At a time when the world community is concerned about China’s assertive actions in the Taiwan Strait, East China Sea and South China Sea, Taiwan is keen to work with groupings such as AUKUS, Five Eyes, G7 and Quad to put in place a coherent and cohesive defence framework for the region, Lin told a group of journalists from across the world on the eve of the island’s National Day.

Lin highlighted the growing cooperation of Taiwan’s semiconductor majors with countries such as India, Japan, Germany and the US and said this is part of the new government’s foreign policy based on creating three chains – a security alliance chain, a non-China and resilient supply chain and a global democratic chain.

“I think the Indo-Pacific framework or the Quad just [bring] together several countries because we are now faced with similar geopolitical challenges. All these related countries are put under the same geopolitical framework and the reason [for this] is China’s rising power and its expansionism,” he said while responding to a question from HT about how Taiwan hoped to work with Quad and India.

“China is challenging the existing rules-based international order. I think it is legitimate that all countries, especially like-minded countries, get together and have closer cooperation and dialogue to face the challenge together, and among these [countries], India is especially important,” he said.

Lin emphasised the need for an “over-arching cooperation framework” that can build on the complementary economies of India and Taiwan. In addition to both sides being concerned about China’s expansionism, dominance of supply chains and economic coercion, such cooperation is “also highly co-related with India’s ambition”, he said.

In this regard, Lin pointed to Taiwan’s Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (PSMC) and another chip company forging a joint venture with India’s Tata Group and said: “All of these efforts are to create a clean network and get away from the Red supply chain.”

Lin suggested New Delhi can launch initiatives to attract Taiwanese companies that were based in China to make investments in India. “We can use such tools as a free trade agreement (FTA) or India can create an environment for Taiwanese small and medium enterprises to operate in the Indian market,” he said.

He also pointed to China’s border disputes with many countries, and said Beijing is using initiatives such as One Belt, One Road and Digital Silk Road as well as its military power, economic coercion and cultural soft power to influence the world.

“The Chinese government is built on authoritarianism. So, this is no longer just different systems fighting each other, this is like the two different camps fighting for the future. One is built by China, the other is the like-minded countries getting together to create a clean network and we are safeguarding the rules-based international order,” Lin said.

Taiwan’s deputy foreign minister Francois Chihchung Wu told the journalists at a separate interaction that the US and India are the only countries “capable of balancing China”. India is one of the countries with which Taiwan’s relations have “improved the most” in recent years and Taipei, which is unable to forge formal diplomatic relations, has resorted to “pragmatic mechanisms” to build political and trade ties with India, France and the US, he said.

Wu also emphasised the need to counter what he described as Chinese President Xi Jinping’s “territorial ambition”. In a reference to China’s territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea and with India, he said: “If we let China be so successful to conquer new territory, everyone knows that the next one will be other territories. The next one will certainly be Japan, the Philippines and then India.”

While India and Taiwan don’t have formal diplomatic relations, both sides established representative offices in each other’s capitals in 1995. While Taiwan has the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center (TECC) in New Delhi, India has the India-Taipei Association (ITA) office in Taipei and these facilities are responsible for promoting cooperation in trade, investment, science and technology, tourism and education.

In 2023, two-way trade was worth $8.2 billion, and India was the 16th largest trading partner for Taiwan. Taiwan’s exports to India touched $6 billion, positioning India as its 12th largest export market.

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