In August 2013, Reuters reported that Beijing had been gaining soft power with investment commitments and trade with countries in Latin America.
However, instead of jumping on the chance to make new allies, China stalled requests to establish diplomatic relations with the countries to avoid galling Taiwanese voters.
Beijing was also courting then-president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九), and the tactic left China with a trump card if cross-strait relations turned cool.
China had rebuffed at least five countries’ requests to switch diplomatic recognition to Beijing, the report said, quoting a China analyst.
Honduras could become the ninth diplomatic ally, and also the fifth country in Latin America, that Taipei has lost to Beijing since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office, following Nicaragua in 2021, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, and Panama in 2017.
Rather than blame Tsai’s government for losing allies because of failed diplomacy, the more likely possibility is that those diplomatic allies already showed signs of switching allegiance during Ma’s administration, and were just waiting for Beijing’s cue to jump ship.
Rather, the efforts of Tsai’s administration meant that diplomatic relations continued for several more years.
In the face of Beijing’s silver bullets, and a diplomatic policy that has the long game in mind, the decreasing number of Latin American allies proves that the “diplomatic truce” policy adopted by Ma’s administration is one based on wishful thinking and sticking one’s head in the sand. It has left a severe string of repercussions in its wake.
Huang Wei-ping is a former think tank researcher and a resident of Kaohsiung.
Translated by Rita Wang
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁) has caused havoc with his attempts to overturn the democratic and constitutional order in the legislature. If we look at this devolution from the context of a transition to democracy from authoritarianism in a culturally Chinese sense — that of zhonghua (中華) — then we are playing witness to a servile spirit from a millennia-old form of totalitarianism that is intent on damaging the nation’s hard-won democracy. This servile spirit is ingrained in Chinese culture. About a century ago, Chinese satirist and author Lu Xun (魯迅) saw through the servile nature of
In their New York Times bestseller How Democracies Die, Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt said that democracies today “may die at the hands not of generals but of elected leaders. Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ‘legal,’ in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts to improve democracy — making the judiciary more efficient, combating corruption, or cleaning up the electoral process.” Moreover, the two authors observe that those who denounce such legal threats to democracy are often “dismissed as exaggerating or
Monday was the 37th anniversary of former president Chiang Ching-kuo’s (蔣經國) death. Chiang — a son of former president Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石), who had implemented party-state rule and martial law in Taiwan — has a complicated legacy. Whether one looks at his time in power in a positive or negative light depends very much on who they are, and what their relationship with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is. Although toward the end of his life Chiang Ching-kuo lifted martial law and steered Taiwan onto the path of democratization, these changes were forced upon him by internal and external pressures,
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) caucus in the Legislative Yuan has made an internal decision to freeze NT$1.8 billion (US$54.7 million) of the indigenous submarine project’s NT$2 billion budget. This means that up to 90 percent of the budget cannot be utilized. It would only be accessible if the legislature agrees to lift the freeze sometime in the future. However, for Taiwan to construct its own submarines, it must rely on foreign support for several key pieces of equipment and technology. These foreign supporters would also be forced to endure significant pressure, infiltration and influence from Beijing. In other words,
RSS