After saluting Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen with military honours, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giamatti hailed the “historic bond of brotherhood and democratic values” between the two countries.
The “very important” visit “allows us to renew our recognition of the Republic of China (Taiwan) as an independent, sovereign state,” Giamatti told Tsai in the courtyard of the presidential palace, as the Taiwan flag flew over our heads.
It seemed like a parallel reality: only 13 countries recognize Taiwan. Western democracies describe their relations as “informal” in deference to Beijing’s insistence that any government that maintains formal relations with China must refuse to recognize Taiwan.
The pomp and pageants of Tsai’s delegation were well received. Her visits to Guatemala and Belize, the most loyal of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies, provide comfort in the face of China’s relentless campaign to destabilize and isolate the country.
On Friday, 10 Chinese military aircraft briefly flew across the unofficial center line of the Taiwan Strait. A few days ago, Beijing hosted Honduran Foreign Minister Eduardo Enrique Reina to announce the country’s transfer of recognition from Taiwan to China.
Taiwan may lose more allies soon. Paraguay, its last diplomatic partner in South America, will elect a new president on April 30. And opposition candidate Efraín Alegre wants to review whether switching to Beijing would offer more benefits – a move Paraguay’s ranchers are pushing for to gain access to the market in China, the world’s largest. largest beef importer.
Although relations with China have not become an electoral issue, Giamatti is ineligible for re-election in June, casting doubt on Taiwan’s relations with Guatemala – the most populous of its remaining diplomatic partners.
Other allies are impoverished or grappling with corruption, which bedevils their relations with Taiwan, the world’s 21st largest economy. Trade with Guatemala and Belize, economies dominated by agriculture, is negligible relative to Taiwan, and the relationship is dominated by development aid from Taipei.
Grita Fuentes, a 28-year-old shoe designer in Guatemala City, received a $3,000 grant under a $3.9 million post-pandemic recovery and women’s employment project by the Taiwanese Development Aid Agency. “I was struggling because I had to close my shop during the pandemic for about a year but still had to pay the rent,” she said. “Now I can buy the machines, and that allows me to expand.”
Although this aid creates goodwill, it pales in comparison to the economic fortunes that some countries hope to reap from China. Tsai said Taipei would not engage in a “senseless competition for dollar diplomacy with China”.
However, Taipei is struggling to provide an alternative. “What they really want is not more aid, but trade and investment,” said a Taiwanese diplomat at an embassy in a Latin American country. “While we can encourage our companies to come and take a look, we can’t force them to invest.”
Another official said some diplomatic allies hoped for investment from Taiwanese technology companies or even help build chip manufacturing capacity, an industry dominated by Taiwan.
“They are asking about semiconductor factories, but this is unimaginable,” he said. “Even in countries where the investment climate is good, there is often no justification for our companies to invest because they lack infrastructure and links with key markets.”
Western diplomats and analysts have urged Taipei to prioritize substantive exchanges with larger and more powerful countries.
Robert O’Brien, a former national security adviser to former US President Donald Trump, said in Taipei last month that despite the lack of diplomatic recognition, the relationship with the United States was “more important” to Taiwan than its diplomatic allies.
Deepening ties with Western democracies had already been Tsai’s focus. Her government has begun a substantive trade and investment dialogue with Central and Eastern European countries that are becoming more cautious about China, such as Lithuania and the Czech Republic.
Just before Tsai’s trip, Czech Parliament Speaker Markita Pekarova Adamova led a 150-strong delegation to Taiwan, the largest group ever to visit the country.
However, this cannot replace Taiwan’s diplomatic allies. The partners regularly speak out against excluding the country at China’s request from international organisations.
Moreover, without friends like Guatemala and Belize, the president would not be able to travel abroad at all, a restriction that Taiwanese officials believe will shake public morale and bolster China’s efforts to challenge Taiwan’s sovereignty.
Tsai is using her trip for two “transit” trips across the US involving officials, including a planned meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy this week.
Some of Taipei’s diplomatic relations are even older than the status quo in the Taiwan Strait, dating back to the days when the lousy state that remained in Taiwan still ruled the whole of China.
Guatemala established formal relations with the Republic of China in the early 1930s. Taiwan was a Japanese colony, and it would take another 16 years for the ROC to be overthrown in the communist revolution in China and flee to Taiwan.
This creates some strange dissonance. Giamatti left no doubt that for him DRC’s legacy lives on. “For us, it is the only and true China,” he told Tsai.
At home, many reject this idea. Only a minority of Taiwanese identify as Chinese, and many still resent the decades-long authoritarian rule of the DRC government after it fled to the island in 1949.
But in Guatemala, Tsai’s delegation greeted the statement with thunderous applause, reflecting an appreciation for a friend’s support above all else.
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