China warns politicians not to travel to Taiwan summit

Delegates from 35 nations discuss threats posed by Beijing

- DAKE KANG

Beijing is pressuring politicians from at least six countries not to attend a summit focused on China in Taiwan, participants told the Associated Press.

Lawmakers in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and an Asian country that declined to be named, say they are getting texts, telephone calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taiwan, in what they describe as efforts to isolate the self-governed island.

The summit, which starts today, is being organised by the InterParliamentary Alliance on China, a group of current and former lawmakers from 35 countries that describes itself as a platform for “addressing threats to the rules-based and human rights systems posed by the rise of China”.

AP spoke to the organisers and three politicians and reviewed texts and emails sent by Chinese diplomats asking whether they were planning to participate in the summit.

In some cases, politicians described vague enquiries about their plans to travel to Taiwan. In other cases the contact was more menacing: one lawmaker told AP that Chinese diplomats messaged the head of her party with a demand to stop her from going.

“They sent a direct message to the president of my party to stop me from travelling to Taiwan,” Sanela Klarić, a member of parliament in Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed. “He showed me the message from them. He said, ‘I’ll advise you not to go, but I cannot stop you, it’s something you have to make a decision.’”