By Tom Plate

An enduring, if not always endearing, spectator sport on the world stage is the taunting of Beijing by Taiwan, as the charming David tries to outfox the slow-moving Goliath. And this time, Taiwan's taunts couldn't be better timed: At the height of the SARS crisis, it is demanding anew to be admitted to the World Health Organization.

What nerve! What possible benefit could accrue to the world by including in its healthcare system a globalized island of 23 million?

SARS has mushroomed into a 9/11-level trauma of Asia. The region must realize that it is a true community of shared problems and interests, and that its disparate nations must work together.

Until recently, Taiwan's pitch for WHO membership might have been dismissed as merely provocative. Neither the U.N. nor the United States — or, for that matter, anyone (besides two dozen or so countries, many in effect bribed by Taipei with foreign aid) — formally regards this offshore island, one of the world's top 20 economies, as an independent state. Not even Taiwan makes that claim, stopping short of the explicit proclamation of independence that Beijing has pledged would cause war.

Squat in the middle of this geopolitical twilight zone sits the issue of Taiwan's admittance into the World Health Organization. The hitch, of course, is that Taiwan isn't a formal state and doesn't qualify.

Nonetheless, Taiwan is a real place, with its own government, despite China's wish that the world would think it as no more autonomous than Hong Kong. No one wants to anger China, but Taiwan has rekindled its WHO campaign with compelling logic.

SARS originated, by all accounts, in China, then spread elsewhere, especially to Hong Kong and other well-traveled Asian locales, infecting nearly 5,000 people and rendering a relative fraction of them dead.

China has been hit with negative publicity for allowing the virus to fester on the mainland for months. Fortunately, the Hu Jintao government has publicly apologized for its deception and ineptitude, sacked prominent officials for covering up the extent of the infection and put two of its best officials in charge of the mess. Beijing should now do something else. It should drop its opposition to Taiwan's admittance to the WHO.

Until now, China has insisted that Taiwan's membership is unnecessarily duplicative because Beijing can deal with the health interests of the island's 23 million people. That argument didn't have much credibility pre-SARS; now it has none at all. As Taiwan officials note, China can't even competently care for the health interests of China, much less anyone else.

What is now paramount for world health is universality of participation in all global health efforts. It's clear that Taiwan should be admitted to WHO.

Fortunately, the WHO Charter has a little-noted provision (Article 8) that would permit Taiwan's entry without having to achieve recognition as a sovereign state. Since Taiwan is not an independent state, by prevailing U.N. standards, Beijing therefore claims theoretical custody of Taiwan's foreign policy at international forums.

A recent precedent for such a move exists. When China's application to World Trade Organization membership was being fluffed up during the Clinton administration's waning months, Washington insisted that Taiwan be put on a parallel track so as to follow Beijing into this world economic body. The WTO charter provided for admission of "Separate Customs Territories" (such as Taiwan), as well as stand-alone nation states.

The WTO precedent is a useful road map to end the WHO impasse. Beijing needs to sever global health issues from its domestic cross-strait quarrel with Taiwan, just as it needs to eschew the politics when it reports on domestic health issues to the outside world.

At the same time, Taiwan needs to ask Beijing — politely, nicely — to support its membership, and should promise to behave itself once in WHO and not make grandstanding nationalist speeches.

If Beijing and Taipei could come together on public health, it would set a stellar example of cooperation at a mature and responsible level. It would also remind the world that Asia is truly becoming a community of common interests.

As the sociologist Max Weber once said, it is not true that good cannot arise out of bad. SARS is a small plague and huge opportunity.

Tom Plate, whose column appears regularly in The Honolulu Advertiser, is a professor at UCLA. Reach him at tplate@ucla.edu. He also has a spot on the Web.