Ecuador will not forget its “mistreatment” by China in failed talks to finance a hydroelectric station, Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa said on Saturday, threatening to seek financing from Taiwan.
Correa said that he “unilaterally ended” talks on Wednesday with the Chinese bank Eximbank “because of the mistreatment and the rudeness” that the Ecuadoran negotiator endured.
“We will not forget this,” Correa said in his weekly broadcast.
Correa said there were “many alternatives” to obtaining financing for the hydroelectric project, including from Taiwan.
“We have shown much solidarity toward China, supported the ‘one China’ policy, have supported China, but we will not forget how they treated us,” Correa said.
Correa’s leftist administration considered “unacceptable” China’s conditions for a US$1.7 billion loan to build the Coca Codo Sinclair hydroelectric plant. Eximbank had demanded that Ecuador’s central bank put its assets up as collateral for the loan.
“Never before,” said Correa, had anyone made such requests, which in any case were forbidden by law.
If the Chinese “are going to treat us like another transnational corporation, with more rigor than the International Monetary Fund ... we will seek financing elsewhere. We are not going to surrender our sovereignty, even to a country as beloved as China,” he said.
The comments came after Ecuador and China signed US$4.7 billion in cooperation agreements in November during a visit by Jia Qinglin (賈慶林), chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
Asked for comment, Ministry of Foreign Affairs deputy spokesman James Chang (章計平) said Taiwan would evaluate Ecuador’s needs for development after Taiwan’s representative office in Ecuador had received the relevant information and reported back to Taipei.
“We consider it important to develop substantial relations with countries that do not have diplomatic ties with Taiwan,” Chang said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY FLORA WANG
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