Taiwan Tati Cultural and Educational Foundation

Internet connectivity is a lifeline — albeit a fragile one — for Taiwan. A recent war game staged in Taipei with experts from the military, tech industries, academia and government suggested that, in the event of a Chinese blockade, the island would be particularly vulnerable to a communications cutoff.

The threat to Taiwan’s digital infrastructure was made plain in February, when Chinese maritime vessels severed two submarine cables connecting the Taiwan to Matsu, a tiny archipelago that belongs to Taiwan but is located just off China’s coast. The months-long outage deprived residents of Internet access and left Matsu, which houses a strategic military base, open to attacks. The damaged cables also exposed the vulnerability of the US tech giant Google, which has a data center on Taiwan’s western coast.

Exclusion of anyone harms efforts to achieve global development goals, UN Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed said on Friday when asked about Taiwan’s bid for UN participation.

World leaders are to meet next week at the annual high-level UN General Assembly, but Taiwan is excluded under a 1971 UN resolution that recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the legitimate representative of China to the UN.

Leaders are also to attend a summit on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals — a global “to-do” list created in 2015 that includes issues such as tackling the climate crisis, achieving gender equality and ending hunger and poverty.