Taiwan’s president said on Sunday that the island will not get involved in “a pointless dispute over dollar diplomacy with China,” which today formalized relations with Honduras after the Central American country broke with Taipei.
“For many years, we believed that by using all our capabilities and with a forward-looking, pragmatic approach, we could support the substantive and long-term development of our diplomatic allies,” Tsai Ing-wen said in a released video.
The government of Honduras announced the severance of relations with Taiwan on Saturday and today in Beijing, the Chinese and Honduran foreign ministers signed an official agreement to establish diplomatic relations between the two countries.
Since Tsai came to power in 2016, Taiwan has lost nine international allies who chose to establish official relations with Beijing.
The official accused China of doing everything possible to suppress “international participation” from the self-governing island, reiterating that pressure and coercion will not change the fact that Taiwan and China are “mutually non-submissive”.
Earlier, Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu had spoken in similar terms, calling the turnaround in Honduras “deeply regrettable”.
At a press conference, Wu revealed that on March 13, the government of Honduras asked the government of Taiwan for two billion dollars (MD), about 1,861.3 million euros (ME), to restructure its foreign debt, 350 million (325.7 ME ) for a dam and another $90 million (83.7 ME) to build a hospital.
Honduras’ break from Taipei in favor of Beijing comes 11 days after Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced her intention to establish relations with the Asian giant.
For this it was inevitable to cut all ties with Taiwan, territory that China claims as a rebel province, since in 1949 the nationalists of the Kuomintang retreated to the island after losing the civil war against the communist army.
The Taiwanese executive withdrew its ambassador to Tegucigalpa this week after the Honduran government announced that its chancellor had traveled to Beijing for negotiations aimed at establishing relations with the Asian giant.
Before his inauguration as President of Honduras on January 27, 2022, Xiomara Castro had said establishing diplomatic relations with China was not on his agenda.
Honduras and Taiwan maintained a relationship of military, economic and educational cooperation: the island funded technical and agricultural aid projects and also hosted hundreds of Honduran scholarship students at its universities.
The split reduces the number of countries with which Taipei maintains official diplomatic relations to 13 and makes the Central American nation the ninth country – and the fifth Latin American – to cut the island since 2016 to establish relations with China.
Honduras joins neighbors Panama, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, which in recent years have cut ties with the island in favor of the People’s Republic of China, a decision that has divided Hondurans.
Source: DN
