Written by Uma Baron.
Image credit: Taiwan Pride 2016 P1190837 22 (cropped) by KOKUYO/Wikimedia Commons, license: CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED.
Taiwan has long been recognised as an international beacon for LGBTQ+ rights. The year before Taiwan’s Supreme Court issued its landmark judgement on marriage equality, 130,000 people flocked to Taipei to attend its Pride parade. The adoption of marriage equality in May 2019 further accentuated Taiwan’s global status as a liberal, open democracy. Four years on from the judgement, attendance numbers at Taipei Pride reached almost 180,000, distinguishing it as Asia’s biggest Pride parade. Since 2019, tongzhi (同志, meaning LGBTQ+ identifying) equality in Taiwan has expanded, with former limitations on transnational same-sex marriage recognition and same-sex adoption for non-related children being rescinded in January and May 2023, respectively. While Taiwan continues to struggle to maintain its visibility in international politics on international human rights issues, such as LGBTQ+ equality, Taiwan has become an expert at utilising its soft power to become a global paragon of democratic progressivism.
Taiwan’s marriage equality, which smoothly fits into its international projection as a liberal democracy, has allowed it to access global forums dedicated to human rights, gender, and LGBTQ+ equality. In turn, this has helped Taiwan preserve and even expand its international space. Termed tongzhi diplomacy (同志外交) or gay diplomacy, Taiwan has successfully positioned itself on the international stage because it promoted global and local gay rights. At the forefront of tongzhi diplomacy research are Dafydd Fell and Chen Nai-cha, who view Taiwan’s success in the international sphere with this form of soft power as “queer diplomacy for a queer state,” alluding to the contested nature of Taiwan’s sovereignty.
While it is not formally part of Taiwan’s diplomatic agenda, tongzhi diplomacy has nevertheless enhanced the island’s reputation on the global stage, broadening the areas within which it is allowed to participate and subverting the established international order, which has long ostracised Taiwan in formal global institutions. There is significant potential for this form of diplomacy to become a crucial tool for Taiwan to develop informal diplomatic relationships across the globe. Analogously, this article aims to shed light on the existing diplomatic power and future potential of Taiwan’s pro-LGBTQ+ values as a tool to preserve and expand its presence in international spaces.
Short Background
When the gay rights movement came to the forefront of Taiwanese politics in 2016 and began to gain international attention, President Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文) strategically publicised tongzhi equality as an integral part of Taiwanese values (台灣價值), positioning tongzhi equality as an inherent part of Taiwanese identity and nationalism. The enveloping of gay rights into Taiwanese values strengthened the interconnection of democracy and gay rights in Taiwan’s international projection. As the referendum movement geared up in 2018, the battle for tongzhi equality became intertwined with the public battle to maintain a Taiwanese identity. As a result, when same-sex marriage was legalised in 2019, it was a success not just for LGBTQ+ rights but for a unique Taiwanese identity and all that it represents – democracy, sovereignty, and equality. In the years that have followed, LBGTQ+ equality—and the liberal values associated with it—has become central to Taiwan’s identity on the global stage, making tongzhi diplomacy a unique relationship-building tool.
Tongzhi Diplomacy and Informal Diplomatic Relations
The term tongzhi diplomacy was conceived in 2018 by former President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), who was describing to an audience how he leveraged Taiwan’s pro-LGBTQ+ status during a visit to Berlin. The anecdote goes that in 2004, while serving as Taipei’s mayor, Ma visited Berlin with the hopes of meeting its mayor. However, because Berlin and Beijing are sister cities, Berlin’s mayor was reluctant to have a personal meeting with Ma and evaded his attempts to meet. When Ma secured an invitation to the mayor’s birthday party, he was able to form an informal bond with the initially recalcitrant mayor—who was openly gay—by discussing his personal experiences organising and attending pride parades in Taipei. This, the former president proclaimed, was an example of successfully opening international dialogue with like-minded states by leveraging Taiwan’s pro-LGBTQ+ status.
The success of Taiwan’s informal tongzhi diplomacy can also be seen in the strengthening of relations with countries that do not hold formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Fourteen years after Ma visited Berlin, the European Union (EU) established a yearly Human Rights Consultation with Taiwan, arguably because of Taiwan’s pro-LGBTQ+ status and its positive human rights record. The conference, which alternates between Brussels and Taipei yearly, gives Taiwan the opportunity to inform the EU of policy updates and social advancements in LGBTQ+ and gender equality in Taiwan. This conference has now developed into two annual EU-Taiwan bilateral exchanges on issues of gender equality. Undoubtedly, this is a unique opportunity for Taiwan to highlight its positive human rights and gender equality record on the international stage while simultaneously aligning itself with Western international values and standards. Operating in conjunction with respected international bodies such as the EU on LGBTQ+ issues allows Taiwan to preserve and expand the spaces within which it is able to operate internationally.
To date, Taiwan’s efforts to leverage its LGBTQ+ status to build informal diplomatic relations have been limited in scope, only targeting nations with which informal bilateral relations are already strong, such as EU states or the United States. Taiwan should further leverage its unique position to create and strengthen relations with countries with whom it has less well-defined relationships. For example, Greece, which – compared with other EU states – has a rather limited relationship with Taiwan, recently (February 16, 2024) legalised gay marriage. On the basis of Taiwan’s historical pro-LGBTQ+ position, this could provide a unique opportunity for Taiwan to cultivate an informal cultural relationship with Greece.
Taiwan’s Tongzhi Diplomacy in International Governing Bodies
At the societal level, Taiwan’s many domestic LGBTQ+ organisations have leveraged Taiwan’s pro-tongzhi status to strengthen international people-to-people relations. In Taiwan’s formal and informal diplomatic efforts, these people-to-people interactions are prioritised as a way to promote relations on the basis of shared “democratic values.” As Chen and Fell note, semi-official relationships between Taiwanese tongzhi non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and their government-funded counterparts, such as the Taiwan Foundation for Democracy (TFD, 財團法人臺灣民主基金會), help to expand the avenues through which Taiwan can participate in international spaces. For instance, Chen and Fell’s research notes how TFD grants to the Taiwan Tongzhi (LGBTQ+) Hotline Association (台灣同志諮詢熱線協會) enabled the group to hold international gender equality events in Taiwan and participate in international efforts to lobby official organisations such as the United Nations on LGBTQ+ issues.
Alongside inter-NGO support, government funding for Taiwanese tongzhi NGOs has facilitated their participation in international organisations, including those from which official Taiwanese government representatives are barred. The Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, facilitated by government funding, participates in the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) annual conference. While the Taiwanese government is unable to participate due to its lack of formal recognition, Taiwanese NGOs such as the Hotline Association are able to participate and consequently magnify Taiwan’s visibility through the discussion of LGBTQ+ equality in Taiwan. This is emblematic of how Taiwanese tongzhi NGOs, while pushing for further gender equality within Taiwan, are also significant players in Taiwan’s international diplomatic efforts, as they enhance Taiwan’s global status through its transnational participation in international forums. At the organisational level, while Taiwan is excluded from participating in international bodies such as the United Nations, this does not prevent its tongzhi diplomacy from influencing global policymaking.
Countering People’s Republic of China (PRC) International Rhetoric
Beyond international institutions, Taiwan’s tongzhi diplomacy also provides Taiwan with an opportunity to subvert Beijing’s aggressive efforts to dominate discussions of Taiwan. Despite PRC insistence that Taiwan is a “province of China,” Taiwan’s LGBTQ+ equality and its subsequent promotion on the world stage make the two nations appear on clearly divergent global pathways. Taiwan’s tongzhi diplomacy stands in stark contrast to the “carrot and stick” diplomacy conducted by the PRC, which does not include LGBTQ+ equality or promotion in any form. While academics have argued that tongzhi equality is just a tool for Tsai’s Democratic Progressive Party (DPP, 民進黨) to gain a moral high ground from which to finger-wag at the PRC, it undoubtedly augments the ideological divide between the two nations on either side of the Taiwan Strait. With every pro-LGBTQ+ interaction that Taiwan has in international spaces—even if it is mainly through NGO participation—the gap between official PRC rhetoric regarding Taiwan and the actual reality of the nation widens.
The distinctions between Taiwan’s tongzhi diplomacy and the PRC’s rhetoric have also extended into the realm of linguistics. For example, Xi Jinping (習近平) has increasingly insisted that the people of the PRC should not think of him as the president or party leader but simply think of and refer to him as “同志,” an archaic political term meaning “comrade.” This effort to reclaim the ideological connotations of “同志,” as a political term to refer to people as “comrades” in the PRC, rather than the now widely accepted meaning of “LGBTQ+ identifying” in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and PRC LGBTQ+ circles, is an attempt by the PRC to erase divergence from CCP-dominated rhetoric. This is one way in which the PRC attempts—and fails—to impose global subservience and conformity onto the Mandarin-speaking Taiwanese people. Taiwan’s very act of using the term tongzhi to refer to LGBTQ+ identifying is an act of defiance that subverts the PRC’s dogged, international pursuit of a “One China.” Taiwan’s tongzhi diplomacy further challenges Beijing’s global rhetoric by projecting a Taiwanese representation of a pro-LGBTQ, Mandarin-speaking nation in international spaces.
Overall, this use of language reveals how Taiwan’s tongzhi diplomacy successfully prevents the PRC from monopolising how “China,” and consequently Taiwan, is defined on the international stage. While informal, the very concept of tongzhi diplomacy, stemming from a Taiwanese identity, serves as a tool with which Taiwan can challenge the PRC’s efforts to dominate the global discourse. Through tongzhi diplomacy, Taiwan can undermine the PRC’s absolutist definition of “China” and raise its profile as a distinct nation.
Conclusion
Tongzhi diplomacy is a modified soft power tool in the modern geopolitical toolkit which few nations can actually utilise. Taiwan’s informal tongzhi diplomacy successfully elevates its global standing as a sovereign state, as it allows the nation to preserve and extend the international areas within which it is allowed to operate. This form of diplomacy adds value to Taiwan’s international perception and illuminates its positive gender equality record at an international level, helping it to cultivate its global relationships. Looking forward, Taiwan should expand its usage of this unique form of diplomacy to extend its spheres of influence and strengthen its global relationships.
Uma Baron is a Spring 2024 Intern at the Global Taiwan Institute, a think tank based in Washington D.C. She recently graduated from the University of Edinburgh with an MA Hons in Chinese Studies. Supported by the British Association of Chinese Studies Huayu Scholarship and the MOFA European Connectivity Scholarship, she has spent time in Taiwan studying at Tamkang University and National Cheng Kung University. Uma’s areas of research focus on Taiwan’s cultural soft power and Taiwan’s global diplomacy efforts.
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