Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

On Tuesday, Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib expressed his support for Taiwan on Twitter amid an outbreak of COVID-19 in the nation. In a reference clearly targeted at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Hrib wrote: “I am appalled that politics is obstructing the delivery of vaccines to Taiwan. Prague supports Taiwan and our sister city Taipei.” Hrib is known to be friendly toward Taiwan, as are some other Czech politicians, including Czech Senate President Milos Vystrcil, who declared “I am a Taiwanese” in the Legislative Yuan in Taipei on Sept. 1 last year.

For that, he was threatened by Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅), and even though Wang, at the time visiting Europe, was subsequently asked to avoid such behavior, there was little pushback from European leaders.

After weathering the COVID-19 pandemic for more than a year, Taiwan has since early last month been hit by a wave of local infections. Before then, few people were concerned about vaccines, but the issue has suddenly become the focus of public attention. The urgency of obtaining vaccines has been much discussed, but many do not understand the peculiarities of the vaccine industry, or international vaccine supply and demand amid a pandemic.

Taiwan’s epidemic prevention policy over the past four decades has been oriented toward public health — from the control and prevention of hepatitis B in the early 1980s and the local development of an avian influenza vaccine in the early 2000s to the development of enterovirus vaccines — with emergency situations receiving temporary policy support, but support for vaccine development ebbed as the epidemics subsided.