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Looking at Our Loss of Two Diplomatic Partners from the Remark "Taiwan Is Useless"

icon2019/09/27
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 Looking at Our Loss of Two Diplomatic Partners from the Remark "Taiwan Is Useless"

 

 

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

 

September 26, 2019


 Translation of an Excerpt

 

 

The Tsai government lost seven diplomatic partners in over three years; these countries have certain common traits: First, they chose Beijing because of economic grounds. For instance, Solomon Islands’ Prime Minister Sogavare said that One Belt, One Road would bring huge benefits, while “Taiwan is absolutely useless for us." Second, even though the US and Australia actively intervened, it not only failed to retain our diplomatic partners, who on the contrary believed that Taiwan intervened in the political wrangling in the South Pacific between China on the one hand, and the US and Australia on the other. This is the hidden factor why Sogavare said, "China is a better diplomatic partner in helping the Solomon Islands in countering Australia and the US.”

 

First is the failure of a policy centered on checkbook diplomacy. In the past, when the two sides of the Strait struggled to court diplomatic partners, usually the battle was decided by the figures of economic assistance; however, Mainland China has long debunked the myth, changing to using state-owned enterprises as vanguards, carried out infrastructure construction and improving transportation facilities. Later, Mainland China would gradually introduce economic assistance and investments to strengthen its political influence in that country. Amid the whole thing, although there exists sharp contrast in cross-Strait economic strengths, in comparison, our country has not jumped out of the diplomatic mode centered on financial assistance with our diplomatic partners. And with respect to the challenge of huge economic dividends brought by Mainland China’s One Belt, One Road, Taiwan must fundamentally review the actions in our foreign policy.

 

Second is the ineffectual early warning system. After the DPP assumed power, the two sides of the Strait have lacked channels of dialogue and the foundation for mutual trust, plus the Tsai government has actively coalesced with the US and Japan in countering China, leading cross-Strait relations to a confrontational situation. The PRC uses plucking our diplomatic partners and compressing our international space to exert maximum pressure on Taiwan. Under the imbalance in cross-Strait economic strengths, the Tsai government has thus coalesced with the US, Japan, Australia, etc., to consolidate our diplomacy, utilizing the situation in which the US and Australia counter and contain China, equating the consolidating of Taiwan’s diplomatic partners with safeguarding US strategic interests.

 

Faced with Mainland China’s increasingly sophisticated economic assistance policies, our government should change its binomial foreign policy and instead use polynomial thinking to handle diplomacy, returning to the caveat said by Fredrick F. Chien (錢復): "Mainland policy is the higher policy." Otherwise, as our diplomatic partners think that "Taiwan is useless", even when Taiwan-US relations make further breakthroughs, our diplomacy would only become a sacrificial lamb in the wrangling between the United States and China, and once the two have achieved a compromise, "useless" Taiwan would truly be reduced to an abandoned pawn.

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