THE TTALK QUOTES


On Global Trade & Investment
Published Three Times a Week (with occasional bonus quotes) by
The Global Business Dialogue, Inc.
Washington, DC  Tel: 202-559-9316
No.24 of 2020
MONDAY, APRIL 6, 2020

Click HERE for Saturday's quote from
Vietnam's Deputy Minister for Industry and Trade
TAIWAN: A TV Q & A WITH THE WHO

HONG KONG REPORTER: Will the WHO [World Health Organization] consider Taiwan’s membership?

WHO OFFICIAL [Long silence.]

REPORTER: Hello.

WHO OFFICIAL: I’m sorry. I can’t, I couldn’t hear your question.

REPORTER: Okay, yeah, let me repeat the question.

WHO OFFICIAL: No, that’s okay. Let’s move on to another then. 

An Interview Aired by Radio Television Hong Kong [RTHK]
March 28, 2020
CONTEXT
The RTHK reporter was Yvonne Tong . The World Health Organization official was Dr. Bruce Aylward . A Canadian epidemiologist, Dr. Aylward led the WHO mission to China in February. He was identified in that mission’s report as a Senior Adviser to the Director-General of the World Health Organization. In fact, the mission was a cooperative exercise, more fully it was t he WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID 19) . The Chinese team was led by Dr. LIANG Wannian of China’s National Health Commission.

Our focus today is Dr. Aylward’s now quite famous exchange with Ms. Tong of Radio Television Hong Kong. There is no need to reinvent the wheel here. The Wikipedia entry on Dr. Aylward provides an accurate summary of the episode, Here it is:

On March 28, 2020, during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Aylward was interviewed in The Pulse, a current affairs programme from Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK).[11] Journalist Yvonne Tong asked about status of Taiwan in the WHO and whether the WHO would reconsider Taiwan's membership after Taiwan accused China of denying it entry.[12] Aylward appeared to dodge the question, then when asked if he was still on the line, claimed that he did not hear the question, blaming internet connection issues.[13] Tong offered to repeat the question, but was interrupted by Aylward, who suggested she move on. Tong repeated the question, at which point the call is terminated. When called back, Aylward was asked to "comment a bit on how Taiwan has done so far," and he answered, "We have already talked about China".[14][15] He then formally ended the interview.[14]

The same entry goes on to note a) Dr. Aylward’s biography was subsequently removed from the WHO’s leadership webpage and b) that RTHK was criticized by Hong Kong’s Secretary of Commerce and Economic Development for “[a breach of] the One China Principle.”
COMMENT
Theoretically, it should, ultimately be possible to assign some definite number to the list of issues generated or affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Start your list, however, and it quickly seem infinite. Whatever the size of the list, the role of the World Health Organization is on it. In the United States, the debate over the WHO has begun with questions about China’s influence in the WHO, but it is not likely to end there. In time, other issues of governance and priorities are bound to arise as well. 

Sticking with the immediate topic of the March 28 Hong Kong interview, we are not unsympathetic to Dr. Aylward’s dilemma. Surely the controversy would have been no less if he had said, “but Taiwan is a province of China, and China is a member.” Alternatively, he might have ducked only slightly more artfully and said: “The WHO is a UN agency, and the geographical entity known as Taiwan is not in the UN. In short your question is really one for the United Nations not for the WHO.”

***
The poet Richard Wilbur (1921-2017) wrote a number of children’s poems on the theme of Opposites. One such poem begins:

What is the opposite of flying ?
For birds, it would be just not trying .

With apologies for jumping from a poem for children to a song for grown-ups, we move from Richard Wilbur to the Ronan Keating song, “You say it best when you say nothing at all.” And what is the opposite of that? Right now, for us, it’s Dr. Aylward’s silent pause of March 28, followed by the hard-to-believe, “I couldn’t hear your question.”
SOURCES & LINKS
MS. TONG’S INTERVIEW is a link to the March 28 interview conducted by Yvonne Tong of RTKH with Dr. Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization. This was the source for today’s featured quotes.

ABOUT DR. AYWARD takes you to the Wikipedia entry for Dr. Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization, which includes a description, quoted above, of his recent exchange with Yvonne Tong of RTHK.
 
JOINT MISSION REPORT is the report of the WHO-China Joint Mission on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID 19).

OPPOSITES takes you to an Amazon webpage with some excerpts from this Richard Wilbur book. 

YOU SAY IT BEST is a link to the Alison Krauss version of this song by Ronan Keating. 

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