The Taipei Times is Taiwan’s leading English-language daily, founded in 1999. A reference publication for the international community on the island, it publishes editorials and op-eds from experts, researchers, and policymakers around the world on Taiwanese and regional issues.

I am publishing a new op-ed there on paradiplomacy — international relations forged at the city level — as a strategic lever for Taiwan.

The subject: cities as a diplomatic Plan C

Taiwan now has only 12 formal diplomatic relationships and regularly loses allies under pressure from Beijing. But beneath this official map lies another network: city twinning and partnership agreements, what scholar Ivo Duchacek called “paradiplomacy” as early as 1988.

The imbalance across continents is striking. Taipei alone has 12 twinning agreements with American cities. In Europe, after forty years of relations, Taiwan has only around fifteen formal city-level partnerships in total.

Poland leads European engagement with eight partnerships, reflecting shared post-authoritarian trajectories. The Prague-Taipei twinning in 2020 showed the way forward by structuring cooperation around technical themes — science, public health, smart cities — that are less vulnerable to politicization.

The strategic value of the municipal level is clear: when Lithuania opened a Taiwanese representative office at the state level, its exports to China fell by 91%. Cities, by contrast, offer far fewer handholds for Beijing’s coordinated sanctions. France, notably, has no partnerships among its major cities — Lyon, Paris, Marseille.

I propose the creation of a Europe-Taiwan partnership facility targeting 50 twinning agreements by 2030, focused on smart cities, public health, and the energy transition, with priority given to Central and Northern Europe.

Read the full op-ed in the Taipei Times