TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The French foreign ministry released an Indo-Pacific strategy report naming Taiwan as one of its key partners on the same day the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) held the “Ministerial Forum for Cooperation in the Indopacific.”
CNA reported that this marks the first time France has mentioned Taiwan clearly in its Indo-Pacific strategy report. Taiwan’s name appeared several times in the 67-page document, including as a partner for academic exchange and as one of the EU’s “key partners in global value chains.”
At the beginning of the report, France also mentions the Taiwan Strait as a place with increasing tensions. “Currently, the Indo-Pacific is an area that is seeing profound strategic changes,” the report read, adding that the competition between China and the U.S. and the regional tensions “are changing regional balances of power, and making strategic calculations more complex.”
The report is not the only place China and the U.S. have been singled out. According to Le Monde, neither of the two countries were invited to join the EU forum on Indo-Pacific cooperation, which saw ministers and representatives from over 60 countries and organizations.
Le Monde speculated that China was excluded because the EU sees it as a “systemic rival” while the U.S. was also not invited because the EU did not want China to interpret the invitation as a form of provocation.
Despite China’s absence, however, it was still a focus of the forum. CNA reported that the EU wanted Indo-Pacific countries that rely on Chinese investments to consider it as another option.
“The Indo-Pacific today is an area where there are huge challenges, particularly given the rise of Chinese domination, but it’s also a space where we can find lots of solutions, and we, the Europeans, wish to be side by side with you to find these solutions,” said Jean-Yves Le Drian, French Minister for Foreign Affairs and co-chair of the forum.
“We hope that with mutual help between us and our partners, we can escape the trap of reliance that may bind us through suppressive strategies and specific hegemonic means,” he was quoted by CNA as saying.
Nonetheless, the EU stressed to the media that its new alliance with the Indo-Pacific region “is not an anti-China alliance.”
