Beijing targets Haiti as bid to isolate Taiwan from its diplomatic allies heads to the Caribbean
- If Port-au-Prince ‘can uphold the one-China principle, Beijing is willing to establish country-to-country ties’, commerce official Wang Xiaoyang says
- Beijing can provide ‘interest-free loans and concessional loans’ and will ‘respect the recipient country’, he says
In an interview with Haitian newspaper Le Nouvelliste last week, Wang Xiangyang, head of China’s office of commercial development in Haiti, delivered Beijing’s opening bid.
“If the Haitian government can uphold the one-China principle, the Chinese government is willing to establish normal country-to-country ties with Haiti and enhance cooperation in politics, the economy and trade, public hygiene and education,” he said.
“China is now the world’s second-biggest economy. As a permanent member of the United Nations, China is playing an increasingly important role in international affairs … In addition to free assistance, [China can also provide] interest-free loans and concessional loans.
“China will fully respect the recipient country and direct investment according to the country’s needs to areas like infrastructure that has huge funding gaps.”
Tsai goes on ‘democracy mission’ to Caribbean allies
Wang has also held several meetings with Haitian officials, including Tourism Minister Marie Gréta Roy Clément and former prime minister Evans Paul. He also hosted the Panamanian ambassador to Haiti.
Beijing’s campaign to win over Taiwan’s diplomatic allies has also seen it targeting the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific.
Xu Yicong, China’s former envoy to Ecuador, Cuba and Argentina, said the US was the biggest obstacle to Beijing wooing Taiwan’s diplomatic allies.
“For Taiwan’s allies that haven’t had ties with China, the biggest pressure comes from the US, which has adopted a more anti-China approach under the Trump administration,” he said.
Last weekend, Stanley Kao, Taipei’s top representative to the US, urged all Taiwanese diplomats stationed overseas to maintain close and cordial ties with their host nations.
Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere and although it has some economic ties to Beijing, Fan Hesheng, director of the Institute of Latin American Studies at Anhui University, said development would be limited in the absence of a full diplomatic relationship.
“Haiti is one of the least developed countries in Latin America and though there are no formal ties between China and Haiti, economic activities [between them] have been gradually expanding over the years,” he said.
An academic from the Institute of Taiwan Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said Haiti might ditch Taiwan soon.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Port-au-Prince did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the issue.