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The night before the plane landed with the masks, Jhy-Wey Shieh was in a room at the Steigenberger Hotel at Frankfurt airport and practiced kung fu. He is excited. The next morning, on April 9, around 6:00 a.m., he was supposed to receive a million respirators from the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, a gift from the government to Germany. Shieh can’t fall asleep, and kung fu usually helps him get tired, he says later. However, he remains awake until three o’clock.
Jhy-Wey Shieh
Nicky Loh / REUTERS
Shieh is the representative of Taiwan in Germany. He is allowed to wait near the runway at Frankfurt airport, from where he sees the plane approaching. “It almost made me cry,” says Shieh two weeks later at the Taiwan office at the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin, where he remembers the night in Frankfurt. “It was an internal tension.”
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Taiwan is one of the countries with the lowest infection rate thanks to measures quickly implemented in the crown crisis. The baseball league started on the island in mid-April, although without spectators. Now the country with its 23 million inhabitants is trying to gain more international influence and power over its great opponent, China. China sees democratic Taiwan as part of its own territory and blocks recognition of the country. Germany also does not recognize Taiwan because the relationship with the People’s Republic is too important. The masks that Taiwan has also shipped to the United States, Italy, and other countries are more than just a nice touch. They are a diplomatic signal.
“Meanwhile, I call myself a boat owner, two or because we are all in the same boat.”
The representative of Taiwan Jhy-Wey Shieh
That is why Shieh personally traveled to the Frankfurt track. Shieh, 65, is not a professional diplomat. He did his PhD at Theodor Fontane in Bochum in the 1980s, after which he worked in Taipei as a professor of German at Soochow University. In 2005, the then President of Taiwan sent him to Germany for the first time as a representative, then returned to Taiwan for a few years to moderate a political talk show on television. He has been back in Berlin for four years. Because Germany does not have official relations with Taiwan, Shieh does not have the title of “ambassador”, but of “representative”. He found a way to deal with it. “Meanwhile, I call myself a boat owner, two or because we are all in the same boat.”
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The coronavirus has changed Shieh’s work. Appointments with parliamentarians are eliminated, instead, the father of two daughters works half the week from home. He always has his cell phone on. “We can be contacted at any time,” says Shieh. The night before, he had only written to the Taiwan Foreign Minister because the Minister of Health, Jens Spahn (CDU), had officially thanked Taiwan for the masks. Thanks were difficult for the federal government. When government spokesman Steffen Seibert was asked about donations of masks at a press conference a few days earlier, he avoided and avoided the name “Taiwan.”
Cardboard Hearing: On April 11, this baseball game started in Taiwan with no spectators
Ann Wang / REUTERS
“To be honest, it was a weird scene,” says Shieh. It was 14 days before Spahn thanked him. Despite the long wait, it is a small success for Taiwan, a feeling of recognition that is rare.
Otherwise, Shieh is often encouraged by circles that are very conservative. Earlier this year he was invited to the “Conservatism Library” in Berlin, where he lectured on the conflict with China. The library is considered a group of experts from correct circles; A few weeks earlier, Hans-Georg Maassen was a guest speaker. In late March an interview with Shieh appeared in the right-wing populist magazine “Compact”. Shieh clearly distances himself from right-wing extremism. The representative office will always answer questions about Taiwan, regardless of where it comes from.
An acknowledgment that Shieh is currently seeking is that of the World Health Organization (WHO) Here, too, China is blocking access to Taiwan. Shieh gets loud when he talks about it. “Unfortunately, the WHO has been downgraded to the role of henchman in the Chinese communist regime,” he says. Meanwhile, several German parliamentarians are calling for Taiwan to be granted observer status in the organization because of its wise behavior in the crown crisis.
Is Taiwan benefiting from the crown crisis? “It would be too cruel to say that,” says Jhy-Wey Shieh. “In the end, I would have to agree, but this result is at people’s expense. I don’t have the heart to see it that way.”
In addition to respiratory masks, protective suits are also short items. Shieh donated 100 suits to the municipal clinic in Brandenburg an der Havel last Friday. Dietlind Tiemann, a member of the Bundestag, asked for help, “we know each other.” Shieh attempted to order protective clothing from Taiwan, but it would have taken him several days. She then ordered 100 disposable dresses online, € 14.99 each, took 500 respirators from her representative’s stock, and went to Brandenburg. “I wanted to say: we are there with our hearts.” He had not planned any other such action at the moment.
