The leader of one of Taiwan’s last diplomatic allies in the Pacific said his nation is under increasing pressure from China to end its support for Taipei.
Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr also said China violated the exclusive economic zone of his nation, an archipelago located north of Australia.
Palau is scheduled to hold a national election on Tuesday next week, the same day as the US presidential election.
Photo: David Dee Delgado, Reuters
Pacific nations are determined to maintain their sovereignty and territorial integrity, Whipps said, but warned that the struggle for geopolitical influence is intensifying and would test them.
Washington and Beijing have been vying for sway in a region that is the site of key shipping lanes and communication cables, together with fisheries and seabed minerals.
China “has been pushing hard,” Whipps said in response to a question about whether the result of Palau’s presidential and parliamentary elections would determine its future relationship with Taiwan.
“It’s very clear that they have an agenda, and the agenda is Taiwan,” he said. “They try to convince everybody that what Palau is doing, and everybody else, is illegal” in terms of recognizing the Taipei authorities.
China has deployed its rising economic might to steadily whittle away the number of nations that diplomatically recognize Taipei, particularly among developing Pacific nations where investment and infrastructure are urgently required.
Only 12 countries globally maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan after the Pacific state of Nauru announced earlier this year that it would be switching recognition to Beijing.
That is one of the reasons why foreign ministries and analysts are closely watching elections in tiny nations such as Palau, which has a population of about 20,000 people.
The country also sits strategically between Hawaii and the US’ diplomatic partner, the Philippines.
Whipps has been broadly supportive of US President Joe Biden’s efforts to buttress diplomatic ties with the Pacific, even using the outgoing president’s “Build Back Better” slogan in his own re-election campaign.
The Palauan leader has been keen to tighten security ties with Washington as well, even weighing the deployment of US missile batteries to his nation.
While the president has frequently been critical of China’s actions in the region, he did not provide specific instances of Beijing putting pressure on his administration to cut diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not reply to a written request for a response to the president’s comments.
Whipps faces a tight race for re-election against his predecessor, former Palauan president Tommy Remengesau Jr, who has questioned whether Palau needs to further strengthen military links with the US.
Still, Remengesau was adamant in his support for ties with Taiwan while in office.
Bloomberg has reached out to his campaign for comment, but has not received a reply yet.
Whipps highlighted the exploration of sea floor mining as a point on which he also disagrees with Beijing.
While major governments around the world, including some Pacific neighbors, consider the sea floor an important place to explore for critical minerals to support the green transition, Whipps is an outspoken opponent.
“We have the healthiest tuna stocks in the world, but yet we want to go rip up the bottom of the Pacific and don’t know the consequences of it, because supposedly it’ll help us in the energy transition? We have to look at everything in totality,” he said.
Whipps said he was frustrated with Chinese vessels’ repeated, unauthorized entry into Palau’s exclusive economic zone, which stretches for 200 nautical miles (370km) around the nation.
The president has previously accused Beijing of limiting Chinese visitors to Palau, a particularly sensitive area for the tourism-dependent nation.
“This is where nations that believe in freedom, believe in democracy, believe in the rule of law, need to stick together and protect that,” Whipps said. “Otherwise, we can just be swallowed up.”
A small number of Taiwanese this year lost their citizenship rights after traveling in China and obtaining a one-time Chinese passport to cross the border into Russia, a source said today. The people signed up through Chinese travel agencies for tours of neighboring Russia with companies claiming they could obtain Russian visas and fast-track border clearance, the source said on condition of anonymity. The travelers were actually issued one-time-use Chinese passports, they said. Taiwanese are prohibited from holding a Chinese passport or household registration. If found to have a Chinese ID, they may lose their resident status under Article 9-1
Taiwanese were praised for their composure after a video filmed by Taiwanese tourists capturing the moment a magnitude 7.5 earthquake struck Japan’s Aomori Prefecture went viral on social media. The video shows a hotel room shaking violently amid Monday’s quake, with objects falling to the ground. Two Taiwanese began filming with their mobile phones, while two others held the sides of a TV to prevent it from falling. When the shaking stopped, the pair calmly took down the TV and laid it flat on a tatami mat, the video shows. The video also captured the group talking about the safety of their companions bathing
PROBLEMATIC APP: Citing more than 1,000 fraud cases, the government is taking the app down for a year, but opposition voices are calling it censorship Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday decried a government plan to suspend access to Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu (小紅書) for one year as censorship, while the Presidential Office backed the plan. The Ministry of the Interior on Thursday cited security risks and accusations that the Instagram-like app, known as Rednote in English, had figured in more than 1,700 fraud cases since last year. The company, which has about 3 million users in Taiwan, has not yet responded to requests for comment. “Many people online are already asking ‘How to climb over the firewall to access Xiaohongshu,’” Cheng posted on
A classified Pentagon-produced, multiyear assessment — the Overmatch brief — highlighted unreported Chinese capabilities to destroy US military assets and identified US supply chain choke points, painting a disturbing picture of waning US military might, a New York Times editorial published on Monday said. US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s comments in November last year that “we lose every time” in Pentagon-conducted war games pitting the US against China further highlighted the uncertainty about the US’ capability to intervene in the event of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. “It shows the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically
RSS