It’s crucial to reintegrate Taiwan into the ICAO

The scale of Taiwan’s involvement in civil aviation in East Asia makes its exclusion from the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) petty, and contrary to the basic principles of the United Nations and world order. One can justify the isolation of a rogue regime but Taiwan is a key exporting and innovative research country, and disproportionately reliant on airline traffic to bring its goods to market. Taiwan is also a busy air hub linking other industrial centers along the East Asian littoral. 

Taiwan’s seat in the world’s international institutions was replaced by Communist China in 1971. This change was influenced in part by Western interest in rehabilitating China during the height of the Cold War, when Beijing was thought to be useful to counterbalance the Soviet Union. But now it is time for the U.S. and its allies to reintegrate Taiwan into the framework of international institutions, especially those dealing with emerging technologies upon which air passenger safety depends.

Taiwan is excluded from the ICAO’s 41st Assembly Session, scheduled from Sept. 27 to Oct. 7, 2022, in Montreal. The organization is the principal forum for the formulation of aviation-related standards brought about by the accelerating pace of technological innovations. The session theme is “Reconnecting the World,” after the reduction in flights caused by COVID, but its primary focus will be on issues reinforcing the priority of safety. 

The exclusion of Taiwan’s Civil Aeronautics Administration means Taipei will be blocked from contributing and coordinating issues related to technical interoperability, environmental standards, anti-terrorism, and new technological developments such as remotely piloted vehicles and cybersecurity. Taiwan’s invitation to, and active participation in, the ICAO 38th Assembly Session in 2013 was welcomed by many United Nations members, and was an important precedent for what was essentially an apolitical conference.

Notwithstanding tensions, China has not excluded Taiwan from shared air traffic and policies to harmonize their procedures, given the obvious commercial benefits to Beijing. Air traffic flights have been coordinated between the two countries since December 2008, and these have grown from three direct cross-strait flight paths into the involvement of 10 Taiwanese and five Chinese airports (Beijing, Shanghai Pudong, Chengdu and Xiamen). This interaction includes 890 passenger and 84 cargo flights per week, and points to the safety benefits that accrue to China.

Global air traffic control is managed through the ICAO’s 300 Flight Information Regions (FIR), comprising networks of radar and air traffic controllers. Taiwan is responsible for the Taipei FIR, supervising 18 international and four flight routes for 1.85 million aircraft flights in 2019, in coordination with those of its neighbors, including China, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines.

In 2019, Taiwan’s 17 airports saw almost 72 million passengers, of whom 49 million passed through Taoyuan International Airport, almost 5 percent more than in 2018. Taipei has air service agreements with 57 countries, hosting 97 airlines with flights into Taiwan, on 324 routes and connecting to 148 cities around the world. COVID reduced these totals to 66 airlines

through 172 routes to 76 cities, but numbers are expected to rebound. Taiwan’s China Airlines and EVA Airways ranked 30th and 40th, respectively, in global passenger traffic.

In 2020 and 2021, Taiwanese air cargo reached totals of 2.44 and 2.92 million metric tons, respectively. Airport Council International statistics indicate that in 2020, Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport handled the world’s fourth-largest volume of international air cargo. International Air Transport Association (IATA) 2020 statistics reveal that Taiwan’s China Airlines and EVA Airways were fifth and 16th heaviest carriers, respectively.

Taiwan’s exclusion from ICAO’s technical meetings — primarily at the behest of China and its few allies — can cause delays in the application of safety measures. ICAO’s 2016 policy direction on air cargo security, and its 2017 provisions against portable lithium devices, were made known to Taipei only by its diplomatic allies within the organization. Similarly, ICAO’s rapidly evolving policy on remotely piloted vehicles has compelled Taiwan to anticipate ICAO in the formulation of its own measures, in this case in 2020. 

Despite these challenges, Taipei has consistently met ICAO’s Standards and Recommended Practices. Its current effort is to develop a next-generation air traffic control automation system, to enable the Taipei FIR to remain interoperable through to 2032 by meeting the requirements of ICAO’s Global Air Navigation Plan and Aviation System Block Upgrades.

Taiwan’s reintegration into ICAO would require the U.S. and its democratic allies to exert their influence on the member states in the UN General Assembly and within the ICAO secretariat, to mobilize votes for the initiation of proceedings for the reinvitation of Taipei. Taiwan is already as integrated in the actual day-to-day operation of air traffic coordination as China, but both countries will suffer easily avoidable consequences if Taiwan encounters a delay in the implementation of key safety measures.

Julian Spencer-Churchill, Ph.D., is associate professor of political science at Concordia University, director of the Canadian Centre for Strategic Studies and a former Canadian Forces captain. He has taught multiple courses on aviation safety and security for CATSA (The Canadian Air Transport Security Authority).