Leaders from more than 50 African nations gathered in Beijing on Monday to attend the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, where Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) delivered a speech pledging US$60 billion of financial support for the continent, matching his pledge from three years ago.
Despite the eye-watering levels of investment, there is mounting evidence that China’s heavy presence in Africa is nothing short of a neocolonial resource grab that uses “debt-trap” diplomacy to saddle African nations with unsustainable levels of debt.
Beijing’s increasing assertiveness around the world is sounding alarm bells in Washington, but it also affords Taiwan an opportunity to boost its diplomatic credentials as a key ally to counter China’s threat.
In the Asia-Pacific region, China’s militarization of waters in the South and East China Seas through aggressive island-building is well-documented. On Monday, Japanese Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera said that China has been “unilaterally escalating” military activities over the past year, including conducting airborne operations around Japanese airspace and sending a nuclear submarine near disputed islands.
“This has become a significant concern for our country’s defense,” Onodera said.
The umbrella of Beijing’s nefarious influence spreads much wider than just the Asia-Pacific region. The Chinese Communist Party is steadily painting the globe red as it leverages its economic might to force indebted nations in Africa and elsewhere to cede strategic ports and hand over valuable mineral wealth and resources to pay off Chinese loans.
Sri Lanka is perhaps the most egregious example of the grave security threat posed by China’s “debt-trap” diplomacy, delivered through its Belt and Road Initiative. In December last year, the Sri Lankan government was forced to hand over the strategic port of Hambantota to China on a 99-year lease in a desperate attempt to pay off US$8 billion of debt the nation had racked up to Chinese state-controlled firms.
Perhaps the irony was lost on China’s leaders, given that Hong Kong’s New Territories were leased to Britain from China during the Qing Dynasty in 1898 for, you guessed it, 99 years — an aspect of the UK’s colonial past about which China never fails to remind Britain.
China last year opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, whose government is reportedly close to striking a deal with a Chinese state-controlled company that would cede control of its main port, which is the main access point for US, French, Italian and Japanese military bases in the area.
Earlier this year, French magazine Le Monde reported that China had infiltrated the African Union’s computer network and had been siphoning confidential data to a server in Shanghai every evening for five years from 2012 to last year. The union’s building was funded almost entirely by China as a “gift” to Africa and constructed by Chinese firms, with everything down to the furniture and interior fittings supplied by China. It was the mother of all Trojan horses.
However, perhaps of even more concern for Washington is that China has even begun to reach into South America, which the US regards as its backyard. The latest example of this occurred last month, when Beijing poached Taiwan’s former diplomatic ally El Salvador, eliciting an uncharacteristically robust response from the US Department of State.
Washington is clearly rattled by China’s neocolonial designs, but out of every crisis comes an opportunity, and Taipei should be doing everything in its power to leverage heightened concern over Chinese expansionism to supercharge its relationships with the US, Japan and other like-minded nations.
Saudi Arabian largesse is flooding Egypt’s cultural scene, but the reception is mixed. Some welcome new “cooperation” between two regional powerhouses, while others fear a hostile takeover by Riyadh. In Cairo, historically the cultural capital of the Arab world, Egyptian Minister of Culture Nevine al-Kilany recently hosted Saudi Arabian General Entertainment Authority chairman Turki al-Sheikh. The deep-pocketed al-Sheikh has emerged as a Medici-like patron for Egypt’s cultural elite, courted by Cairo’s top talent to produce a slew of forthcoming films. A new three-way agreement between al-Sheikh, Kilany and United Media Services — a multi-media conglomerate linked to state intelligence that owns much of
The US and other countries should take concrete steps to confront the threats from Beijing to avoid war, US Representative Mario Diaz-Balart said in an interview with Voice of America on March 13. The US should use “every diplomatic economic tool at our disposal to treat China as what it is... to avoid war,” Diaz-Balart said. Giving an example of what the US could do, he said that it has to be more aggressive in its military sales to Taiwan. Actions by cross-party US lawmakers in the past few years such as meeting with Taiwanese officials in Washington and Taipei, and
The Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan has no official diplomatic allies in the EU. With the exception of the Vatican, it has no official allies in Europe at all. This does not prevent the ROC — Taiwan — from having close relations with EU member states and other European countries. The exact nature of the relationship does bear revisiting, if only to clarify what is a very complicated and sensitive idea, the details of which leave considerable room for misunderstanding, misrepresentation and disagreement. Only this week, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) received members of the European Parliament’s Delegation for Relations
Denmark’s “one China” policy more and more resembles Beijing’s “one China” principle. At least, this is how things appear. In recent interactions with the Danish state, such as applying for residency permits, a Taiwanese’s nationality would be listed as “China.” That designation occurs for a Taiwanese student coming to Denmark or a Danish citizen arriving in Denmark with, for example, their Taiwanese partner. Details of this were published on Sunday in an article in the Danish daily Berlingske written by Alexander Sjoberg and Tobias Reinwald. The pretext for this new practice is that Denmark does not recognize Taiwan as a state under