A Hong Kong government statement had said that as one its departments, RTHK should not deviate from the understanding that WHO membership is based on sovereign states, and the Director of Broadcasting "should be responsible for this." But RTHK said the episode had looked at various responses across the world to the coronavirus emergency, with Taiwan the focus of just part of the program, and journalists hadn't once referred to it as a country, an idea that is anathema to Beijing.
The WHO ended Taiwan’s observer status at its annual World Health Assembly in 2016, the same year President Tsai Ing-wen, of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party, was elected.
