Noah Smith In conversation with Dr. Wei-ting yen
Introduction
On 19 June, the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme at the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) hosted Dr. Wei-ting Yen to discuss her research surrounding Taiwan’s COVID experience and the lessons it offers on societal resilience. Dr. Yen is currently an assistant research fellow at the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica. She also serves as Associate Editor for Asian Politics & Policy and is a Public Intellectuals Program Fellow at the National Committee on US-China Relations. Dr. Yen’s research mainly focuses on democratic governance, comparative political economy, and welfare state development in Asia. Her recent work has examined pandemic politics from a comparative perspective.
Before delving into her research, Dr. Yen shared her inspirations. Given Taiwan’s longstanding geopolitical isolation, foreign media tend to focus narrowly on issues of security and cross-Strait relations—especially the question of Taiwan’s ability to defend itself against China. What is often ignored, however, is Taiwan’s lived experience. Dr. Yen noted the media silence on Taiwan’s COVID governance performance, despite its proximity to China and perceived vulnerability.
Building on this, Dr. Yen observed that while discourse often centers on the prospect of war with China, the societal will of the Taiwanese people is largely overlooked. She argued that assessing the resilience of Taiwan’s civil society is equally, if not more, critical.. The people’s ability to function during crises, maintaining daily life and duties without panic, is a vital component of national defense. This brings us to the main focus of Dr. Yen’s seminar: What lessons might Taiwan’s COVID governance experience tell us about its societal resilience under wartime conditions?
Explaining Taiwan’s COVID Management Success
When COVID first broke out, Johns Hopkins University estimated that Taiwan would be among the top three countries to suffer the most from the virus. In reality, Taiwan did not have its first COVID outbreak until May 2021, remaining relatively COVID-free for 18 months. Furthermore, Dr. Yen’s data, obtained from the University of Oxford and covering the period from January 2020 to January 2022, showed that Taiwan’s cumulative confirmed COVID cases and deaths per million people were much lower compared to South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and the United States. These statistics illustrate Taiwan’s success in containing COVID.
The first major conclusion of Dr. Yen’s research was that Taiwan’s success was in part due to the quick securitisation of the virus. Taiwan’s government succeeded in turning COVID into a national security issue, which forced more internal cohesion. Within three days of the Wuhan lockdown, then-president Tsai Ing-wen convened a high-level national security meeting. During this meeting, and despite the very small number of cases in Taiwan, Tsai compared fighting COVID to fighting a war. Other government officials echoed this tone, creating a unified consensus on the nature of the crisis. The government also put out daily COVID press conferences, maintaining constant dialogue with the people. Dr. Yen noted that wartime rhetoric surrounding COVID was not unique to Taiwan, but Taiwan was particularly successful in securitizing the virus due to the “self-help” mentality that has stemmed from international isolation and the fact that the virus came from China. This successful securitisation increased cohesion, minimising the collective action problem. This made businesses and people in Taiwan more willing to voluntarily support spread-containment and tracking policies, as well as border-related containment policies.
Dr. Yen’s second conclusion was that Taiwan’s pre-crisis industry-level coordination capacity explains its success in mobilising resources to produce face masks, but not vaccines and testing kits. Crisis response requires coordinated mobilisation: identifying resources and key personnel, and deploying them effectively. During the pandemic, Taiwan’s acting Premier immediately declared face masks “crucial war reserve stocks,” imposed an export ban, and centralised distribution. Taiwan managed to multiply its mask production from 1.8 million per day to 16 million per day in just three months, thanks to companies’ cooperation in production and machinery retooling. Dr. Yen connected this successful coordination to Taiwan’s history as a developmental state. Taiwan’s developmental state model prioritised flexible Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), which facilitated coordination, communication, and retooling during the mask production surge.
However, the same developmental state model contributed to Taiwan’s lag in vaccine and testing kit production. The flexibility of the SMEs model did not provide the capital-intensive infrastructure required to produce large-scale medical resources. As a result, Taiwan was unable to produce its own vaccines and limited in its production of testing kits. Dr. Yen contrasted this with South Korea’s model, which revolved around chaebols—large, family-owned conglomerates with diversified branches. These companies already possessed biotech industries and the financial depth to create and produce testing kits at scale. The South Korean government collaborated with the chaebols to fast-track approval and production.
The last conclusion was that the politicisation of vaccines crippled effective governance and amplified misinformation. As previously mentioned, Taiwan’s first COVID outbreak only occurred in May 2021, introducing a level of uncertainty and panic that had previously been avoided. The outbreak also triggered a wave of disinformation from China and coincided with a domestic vaccine shortage, as its home-grown vaccine was still under development. At this point, the securitization of pandemic response started to falter, and political parties began to politicize vaccine procurement and distribution issues. In response to public panic and disinformation, the government launched an additional daily press conference dedicated to rebutting disinformation. This top-down approach, however, only led to more distrust. The resulting political crisis overshadowed the government’s prior achievements in managing the pandemic. Public dissatisfaction was only mitigated through strategic international support, especially vaccine aid from Japan and the United States.
Three Lessons for Crisis Management
Dr. Yen offered three lessons based on her assessments of Taiwan’s experience. The first is that while securitising an issue can be effective, it requires a consensus on the nature of the crisis. Many other countries failed to agree on the nature of the COVID crisis. Taiwan’s success in securitisation comes from its clear definition and continued use of wartime rhetoric. By contrast, Taiwan’s response to China’s increasing use of gray zone tactics in the Taiwan Strait is hampered by a lack of consensus. The ambiguous nature of gray zone tactics makes it challenging to clearly define when conflict begins or what form it takes. Without a unified societal consensus on the nature of the threat, effective governance is hindered, and public panic becomes more likely. Dr. Yen stressed the importance of developing a clear framework to understand China’s types of aggression and to anticipate what a potential conflict with China might look like.
The second lesson is that Taiwan’s industrial base has strong coordination capacity in traditional manufacturing, but limited capability in other strategic sectorsDr. Yen emphasised the need to cultivate strategic manufacturing capacity now, during peacetime. As demonstrated by the rapid mobilization of mask production, building this capacity in advance would allow Taiwan to accelerate manufacturing efforts during war or future conflict.
The third lesson is that panic and political crisis must be prevented. As seen in Taiwan’s COVID experience, effective governance was crippled when the virus was politicised and disinformation rampant. Dr. Yen proposed that the government cannot allow politics to hinder effective governance. She also suggested that Taiwan should enhance bottom-up public awareness of information warfare. By increasing media literacy, Taiwan’s social fabric can be strengthened.
Conclusions
By examining Taiwan’s COVID governance experience, Dr. Yen showed that Taiwanese civil society has the capacity to maintain resilience under wartime conditions. When there is a coherent national crisis, securitisation can unite Taiwanese society against a common threat. As seen in mask mobilisation, Taiwan has the capacity to ramp up production of key resources. However, politicization, information warfare, and lack of cohesion could threaten Taiwan’s societal resilience. What Taiwan can do now is focus on creating a common threat perception, strengthening manufacturing in strategic sectors, and improving media literacy.
The seminar was organised by Dr Bo-jiun Jing, Senior Research Fellow in Taiwan Studies at OSGA, as part of the Oxford Taiwan Studies Seminar Series. This recap was produced in partnership between the Oxford Taiwan Studies Programme and St Antony’s International Review.
