Part of the intense diplomatic war between Taiwan and China is disputed now in Latin America: Honduras is the last country to distance itself from Taipei to link up with Beijing, a setback for the Asian island that also undermines US influence in the region.
Paraguay will be the next battleground as it holds presidential elections at the end of April. Opposition candidate Efraín Alegre said that if he wins, he will reassess relations with Taiwan.
Of the 13 states in the world that maintain relations with Taipei after the Honduras decision, seven are from Latin America and the Caribbean: Guatemala, Belize, Paraguay, Haiti, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.
Also, the Vatican, Swaziland in Africa, and the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu in the Pacific.
The President of Taiwan, Tsai Ing-wen, will visit Guatemala and Belize this week to try to prevent them from following in the footsteps of Honduras and Costa Rica (2007), Panama (2017), El Salvador (2018) and Nicaragua (2021), which they broke with Taipei under pressure from China.
(You can read: What is behind the intention of Honduras to establish relations with China?)
“We are facing a geopolitical recomposition of the world,” which “is no longer unipolar, but multipolar,” and China “is one of the imperial poles that is entering the region, not only Central America, but throughout Latin America,” he told the AFP the Honduran academic Zoila Madrid, recently retired from the National University.
China is one of the imperial poles that is entering the region, not only Central America, but throughout Latin America.
She believes that the decision of Honduras is a blow to Washington, because he always saw him as a faithful ally. “Honduras plays not only an economic role, but also a geopolitical one, because the United States has always relied on Honduras geopolitically and militarily, in fact Honduras has seven military bases” from the United States, Madrid points out.
(Furthermore: Taiwan buys an arsenal of weapons from the US to defend itself against China)
Taipei, however, places more emphasis on “the quality than the quantity” of its diplomatic relations, explains Sung Wen-ti of the Australian National University.
“A strong and trusted partnership with other countries (such as the United States or Japan) is more important than looking at the number of countries that formally recognize
Taiwan,” the analyst said before Tegucigalpa broke ties with the island.
Latin America has been the scene of the diplomatic struggle between China and Taiwan since they separated in 1949, after the Chinese civil war.
Beijing regards the island of 23 million as a rogue province, which it hopes will one day recapture even by force. And under the “One China” principle, it does not allow any country to simultaneously maintain diplomatic relations with Taipei.
The next one facing the dilemma will be Paraguay, the only one in South America that recognizes the island. However, “it is very difficult for Paraguay to establish diplomatic relations with China, although it cannot be ignored that there is great political pressure” and “the field is fertile in favor of China,” the former Paraguayan foreign minister told AFP. Eladio Loizaga.
The analyst Héctor Cristaldo thinks something similar: “I don’t think that the opposition, if it wins the elections, will be able to change the diplomatic ties that it maintains with
Taiwan. I can’t imagine a Paraguayan president in a scenario like that.”
(You may be interested in: ‘The risks of a Chinese military action against Taiwan have increased’)
Taiwan’s role
The Honduran sociologist and columnist Pablo Carías underlines the contradiction that Washington criticizes the countries that are linked to China despite the fact that it also has diplomatic and economic ties with Beijing.
“The United States is recommending that we not establish relations with China, and yet they have relations”, which implies that it follows the policy of “do what I say, but not what I do”, Carías affirms to the AFP.
Beyond the setback in Honduras, Taipei now has greater “international visibility” than before, being mentioned in G7 joint statements and other multilateral forums, estimates Sung Wen-ti, an expert in Taiwan studies at the Australian National University.
(Also: China would fail if it invades Taiwan, notes US simulation.)
Taiwan has been playing an increasingly prominent role in this strategic rivalry.
“It is understandable that Taiwan feels a bit sad” about Honduras’s decision, but the island “assigns priority” to relations with “leading” countries in the world, such as the United States, Japan, Australia and Europe, he told the AFP.
Furthermore, “Taiwan has been playing an increasingly prominent role in this global strategic rivalry between the United States and China.
Taiwan is to date the strongest liberal democracy in the Chinese-speaking world” and “has a very strong symbolic importance in this values-based narrative or alignment between the US and China,” Sung says.
NOA LEIVA AND HUGO OLAZAR
AFP
ASSUMPTION
#Latin #America #battlefield #China #Taiwan