What many Taiwanese had long been waiting for since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office in May — and hoping would never happen — came to pass on Wednesday: another diplomatic ally, whose name few know how to pronounce, has severed ties and run into the arms of Beijing.
Sao Tome and Principe — an African nation of about 200,000 people — decided to end 19 years of diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which is hardly surprising. Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Chen Chun-shen (陳俊賢) had already warned of relatively unstable relations between the two nations by issuing a “yellow” caution in March.
It nevertheless serves as a deafening reminder of how vulnerable Taiwan is in the face of China, especially to younger Taiwanese who have a vague memory of the vicious diplomatic row across the Taiwan Strait under the nation’s first Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) president Chen Shui-bian (陳水扁), whose eight-year presidency saw Taipei lose nine allies.
What is done cannot be undone. People are now more curious about why it happened and what happens next.
The diplomatic break has resulted in a lot of finger-pointing — the DPP blaming Beijing; the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) linking it to the Tsai administration’s cross-strait policy; and academics attributing it to a shift in the Taiwan-China-US relationship after the widely discussed Dec. 2 telephone call between Tsai and US president-elect Donald Trump.
It goes without saying that China played a major role in Sao Tome and Principe’s decision to cut ties with Taipei, though the former’s immediate response was relatively lukewarm. It simply welcomed the African nation going back to the “correct path of the ‘one China’ principle.”
However, given Minister of Foreign Affairs David Lee’s (李大維) comments on Wednesday that Sao Tome and Principe approached China as early as 2014 seeking to establish diplomatic relations, why did Beijing decide to accept ties now? Does it have more to do with Tsai’s continuous refusal to toe the line than with Trump’s blatant challenge to China, or the other way around?
Shortly after the news broke Lee said that the Tsai administration’s stance on the so-called “1992 consensus” did not have a bearing on Sao Tome and Principe’s decision. He pointed out that the Gambia cut ties with Taipei and established a formal relationship in Beijing when former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), a staunch advocate of the “1992 consensus,” was still in power.
Lee is not entirely wrong. The Gambia’s move to break up with Taipei in November 2013 — when Beijing was still committed to its tacit “diplomatic truce” with Ma — was a unilateral decision based on financial reasons. However, China’s decision to eventually accept the Gambia’s long-pending request for ties in March of this year has everything to do with the “1992 consensus.” It undoubtedly was an attempt to demonstrate China’s international clout and to issue a warning to Taiwan.
So what about the Sao Tome and Principe case?
Maybe it was because of Tsai’s repeated pledges to maintain the “status quo” or lack of provocative action that Beijing resorted to its usual and less radical punitive tactics, such as limiting the number of Chinese tourists to Taiwan and barring Taiwanese representatives from attending international events.
That means Tsai’s phone call to Trump could have been the primary reason Beijing decided to suddenly up its game and start stripping Taiwan of its diplomatic allies, the existence of which, however symbolic the ties, are crucial to the nation’s claims of sovereignty.
With Trump, an unpredictable third party, entering the already intricate cross-strait dilemma, it seems that an even more uncertain future awaits.
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