China on Saturday stepped up its pressure on Taiwan by urging Taipei’s sole remaining African ally, Eswatini, to align with Beijing, Burkina Faso re-established ties with Beijing.
Burkina Faso on Thursday announced that it was severing ties with Taiwan, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a similar announcement in Taipei.
It was the second nation in a month to abandon Taipei, following the Dominican Republic, and the fourth since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing after signing an agreement to re-establish relations with Burkina Faso, Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi (王毅) said only one African state had yet to come over to China.
“We sincerely hope that this country will join the family of China-Africa friendship at an early date,” Wang said, with Burkinabe Foreign Minister Alpha Barry at his side.
He was confident that all of Africa would stand by China’s side “in the historic cause of China’s full national reunification,” he said.
Taiwan has accused China of using dollar diplomacy to lure away its allies, promising generous aid packages, charges China has denied. Some nations have switched back and forth between Beijing and Taipei several times.
This is the second time Burkina has cut ties with Taiwan. It did so in 1973, before resuming relations with Taipei in 1994.
Barry said a delegation of Chinese experts would visit his nation in the coming days to assess its needs for development assistance, hopefully in time for an agreement by September when Burkinabe President Roch Marc Kabore would be in Beijing for a summit of Chinese and African leaders.
“Burkina Faso intends to fully benefit from the strength and expertise of this country, seeking its support on many social and economic development projects in our own country,” Barry said.
China is Africa’s largest trade partner, with massive investments in mining, construction and banking, though it has been less active to date in Burkina Faso.
TAIWAN IS TAIWAN: US Representative Tom Tiffany said the amendment was not controversial, as ‘Taiwan is not — nor has it ever been — part of Communist China’ The US House of Representatives on Friday passed an amendment banning the US Department of Defense from creating, buying or displaying any map that shows Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The “Honest Maps” amendment was approved in a voice vote on Friday as part of the Department of Defense Appropriations Act for the 2026 fiscal year. The amendment prohibits using any funds from the act to create, buy or display maps that show Taiwan, Kinmen, Matsu, Penghu, Wuciou (烏坵), Green Island (綠島) or Orchid Island (Lanyu, 蘭嶼) as part of the PRC. The act includes US$831.5 billion in
The paramount chief of a volcanic island in Vanuatu yesterday said that he was “very impressed” by a UN court’s declaration that countries must tackle climate change. Vanuatu spearheaded the legal case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, which on Wednesday ruled that countries have a duty to protect against the threat of a warming planet. “I’m very impressed,” George Bumseng, the top chief of the Pacific archipelago’s island of Ambrym, told reporters in the capital, Port Vila. “We have been waiting for this decision for a long time because we have been victims of this climate change for
Taiwan is hosting the International Linguistics Olympiad (IOL) for the first time, welcoming more than 400 young linguists from 43 nations to National Taiwan University (NTU). Deputy Minister of Education Chu Chun-chang (朱俊彰) said at the opening ceremony yesterday that language passes down knowledge and culture, and influences the way humankind thinks and understands the world. Taiwan is a multicultural and multilingual nation, with Mandarin Chinese, Taiwanese, Hakka, 16 indigenous languages and Taiwan Sign Language all used, Chu said. In addition, Taiwan promotes multilingual education, emphasizes the cultural significance of languages and supports the international mother language movement, he said. Taiwan has long participated
Taiwan must invest in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics to keep abreast of the next technological leap toward automation, Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) said at the luanch ceremony of Taiwan AI and Robots Alliance yesterday. The world is on the cusp of a new industrial revolution centered on AI and robotics, which would likely lead to a thorough transformation of human society, she told an event marking the establishment of a national AI and robotics alliance in Taipei. The arrival of the next industrial revolution could be a matter of years, she said. The pace of automation in the global economy can