Taiwan yesterday condemned China for interfering in other nations’ sovereignty and foreign policy through political coercion after Beijing sanctioned ministers from Paraguay and Belize over their diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
Paraguay and Belize are two of just 12 countries to maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
At a routine news briefing in Beijing yesterday, Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mao Ning (毛寧) said the sanctions against Paraguayan Minister of Information and Communication Technologies Gustavo Villate and Belizean Minister of Foreign Affairs Francis Fonseca were designed to “penalize them and serve as a warning to others.”
Photo: Lu Yi-hsuen, Taipei Times
“Certain politicians in Paraguay and Belize have willingly served as pawns of the Taiwan authorities in their attempts to seek independence through external support,” she said.
The measures against the Latin American ministers include the freezing of their assets in China, visa denials and the banning of Chinese organizations from doing business with them, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier.
The ministers had “taken a series of egregious actions and statements ... damaging China’s core interests,” it said, adding that the sanctions were to “safeguard national security” and “oppose separatist activities.”
Photo: Ritchie B. Tongo, EPA
The move comes two days after Taiwan celebrated the Double Ten National Day, with President William Lai (賴清德) delivering a speech that promoted the nation’s increasing investment in defense.
Villate marked the Double Ten National Day on social media saying: “Paraguay reaffirms its relationship of friendship and cooperation, based on shared values and principles: the self-determination of peoples, human rights and democracy.”
Fonseca last month met Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) in Belize.
In June, Villate met Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Chen Ming-chi (陳明祺) in Paraguay.
Neither the Paraguayan minister of communications nor the Belizean foreign ministry immediately responded to requests for comment outside of regular office hours.
In Taipei, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned China’s sanctions against the two minister, describing the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ statement as utterly absurd.
The move openly interfered in other countries’ sovereignty and foreign policy, violated the principles of international law, and showed Beijing’s attempt to force other nations to submit to its political agenda through intimidation and transnational repression, it said.
The foreign ministry reiterated that Taiwan is a sovereign, independent country, and that it and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other. This is an internationally recognized fact and an objective reality across the Taiwan Strait, it said, adding that China has no right to interfere in Taiwan’s diplomatic relations.
It said Taiwan’s engagement with countries such as Belize and Paraguay has always been based on equality, mutual benefit and respect for each other’s sovereignty, principles it described as a consensus in the international community and a fundamental norm of international relations.
China’s coercive tactics only expose its high-handed and unreasonable behavior, make the world more aware of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the international order through hegemonic practices, and strengthen Taipei’s diplomatic allies in their resolve to support Taiwan, it said.
Hung Pu-chao (洪浦釗), director of the Center for Global Strategy and Democratic Resilience at the University of Taipei, said that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) last month said at the BRICS summit that international rules should be written collectively by all countries, and that the logic of “might makes right” no longer works and should have been abandoned long ago.
By Xi’s own standards, China’s latest actions amount to the very power politics that Xi himself has said should be abandoned, Hung said.
The sanctions also show how China uses its domestic laws as a tool to exert pressure on other countries, he added.
Additional reporting by Chen Yu-fu
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