Despite the challenges and diplomatic reversals, Taiwan is in many ways more connected to the international community today than it was during the ‘diplomatic truce’ with China, and its existence as a sovereign state remains secure
Given the highly publicized loss of two of Taiwan’s official diplomatic allies in December last year and June this year, and the possibility that a few more countries could jump ship in the coming months, it is not unreasonable to conclude that Beijing’s renewed pressure on the international community following Tsai Ing-wen’s election has sparked an irreversible domino-effect of abandonment of the democratic nation-state. But as official allies switch recognition, Taiwan is actively but quietly strengthening unofficial ties with a number of key states.
Continues here.
A ChinaFile Conversation between Richard Bernstein, Margaret Lewis and J. Michael Cole
There are plenty of things the United States could do, and ought to do, to prevent further isolation of Taiwan. Although Washington has no right to tell other sovereign states how to act on what they believe to be in their national (often economic) interest—such as, in Panama’s case, establishing diplomatic relations with China—it could certainly do more to counterbalance Beijing’s efforts to narrow democratic Taiwan’s international space.
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Absent a working Taiwan strategy, Beijing has ramped up the pressure to isolate Taipei internationally
Panama on Tuesday severed diplomatic relations with the Republic of China (Taiwan) and established official ties with the People’s Republic of China, in a move that is as much part of Beijing’s efforts to isolate the democratic island-nation as a logical extension of its global economic policy.
Not long after President Juan Carlos Varela Rodríguez made the announcement, Panamanian foreign minister Isabel Saint Malo de Alvarado, on a visit to Beijing, signed a communiqué establishing Panama’s diplomatic ties with China.
“The Government of the Republic of Panama recognizes that only one China exists in the world, the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate government that represents all China, and Taiwan forms an inalienable part of Chinese territory,” the statement said.
My article, published today in The National Interest, continues here.
After more than a billion dollars in infrastructure investment, port acquisitions and the promise of riches, Panama has decided to sever ties with Taiwan and to embrace the PRC
Panama last night announced it was establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, the latest in countries that have decided to sever ties with Taiwan and recognize the PRC.
President Juan Carlos Varela Rodríguez made the announcement on national networks at 8:00p.m. Panama time.
According to La Estrella de Panama, in recent years China has become one of the three largest users of the Panama Canal. In May 2016 Landbridge Group (China) purchased Margarita Island Port, Panama’s largest port. As part of the US$900 million deal to control Panama’s Margarita Island Port, Chinese interests have vowed heavy investments to upgrade port facilities and build a deepwater port capable of docking larger ships. Landbridge is also the firm that acquired the Port of Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory.
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Beijing has repeatedly accused its critics of having a ‘Cold War mentality.’ But is being a Cold Warrior really something to be ashamed of? Not if we’re fighting for the cause of freedom against expansionist authoritarianism
It has been a constant refrain among Chinese officials and party-controlled media over the years to accuse whomever opposes China’s expansionist and militaristic ambitions of having a “Cold War mentality.” Rather than shed light on the actual motivations of Beijing’s critics, however, the sobriquet serves little more than as a blanket term to silence and discredit.
Underlying the accusations is the notion, unrelentingly encouraged by Beijing despite ample evidence to the contrary, that China’s “rise” and emergence as a regional superpower is benevolent, natural, and inevitable. Following that logic, which according to Beijing should not be questioned, any criticism or policy that does not yield to this narrative is invariably proof of containment — the U.S. policy against its Cold War opponent, the Soviet Union — and therefore a Western-led (racist) conspiracy to keep China in a state of subjugation.
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It is nearly impossible to find foreign-language books about Taiwan in Taiwanese bookstores. This needs to be fixed, perhaps with incentives from the government
It’s a complaint that anyone who pays attention to Taiwan has heard time and again over the years: We Taiwanese are isolated, repressed by China, and unfairly ignored by the international community. Although there is absolutely nothing false in that statement, Taiwan’s response to this predicament (the public and the government) has often been far too passive — and this starts here at home.
From the outset, it is important to establish the fact that isolation is the offspring of ignorance, of the audience not knowing of that which is being isolated in the first place. Through a sustained and globe-spanning propaganda campaign, China has been hard at work broadcasting a narrative that, little by little, has succeeded in casting Taiwan into the shadows. By dint of an unrelenting assault on the very symbols of Taiwanese statehood (flags, diplomatic presence, participation at multilateral events, presence at academic settings and in the media, and so on), China has sought to isolate Taiwan by rendering it nonexistent in the global imagination.
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