Pacific’s stability threatened by Beijing-Taipei recognition battle

[B]By DAVID C. HENLEY[/B] [I]Special to the[/I] Saipan Tribune

[I]Editor’s Note: Frequent Pacific Islands traveler David C. Henley, who last year spent 10 days in the CNMI and Guam and three weeks in China, is a foreign correspondent and former Western U.S. daily newspaper owner who covers international diplomatic, economic and military issues in Asia, Europe and Latin America. A former USC journalism professor, he is a member of the Board of Trustee of Chapman University in California and serves on the External Advisory Board of the University’s MA degree program in international studies.[/I]

Because the CNMI is in a unique political union with the Unites States, it is not an independent nation and thus does not have its own official foreign policy and does not exchange ambassadors with any of the world’s 194 sovereign nations.

This same “colonial” relationship, of course, holds for the four other U.S overseas holdings, the Pacific territories of Guam and American Samoa and its Caribbean entities of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the U.S Virgin Islands. Despites, however, the reliance of the CNMI and the four other U.S. possessions on the United States to formulate a nationwide foreign policy, their residents should be aware of the escalating political drama being played out between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Republic of China (ROC) which greatly influences the stability if the Pacific area as well as other regions of the world, particularly the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa.

This continuing drama relates to the problem of diplomatic recognition. At present, only 23 nations recognize the ROC, and most of these 23 are tiny and poor with minuscule populations. The vast majority of the nations of the world, including the larger and influential slates, recognize the PRC. Here in the Pacific, the nations recognizing the ROC are Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, Palua, the Solomon Islands and Nauru. Representing the PRC are Australia, New Zealand, Brunei, Fiji, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Singapore, Tonga and Vanuatu.

In Africa, the only nations that recognize the ROC are Sao Tome and Principe, Burkina Faso, Gambia and Swaziland. In the Caribbean and Latin America, only Belize, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines recognize the ROC. The only European state to recognize the ROC is The Vatican. Particularly in the Pacific, this ongoing competition for diplomatic recognition between the PRC and the ROC has resulted in dangerous “one-upmanship” between the two nations which has brought forth a form of “checkbook diplomacy” that has spawned corruption in various small nations whose leaders have often played off the two Chinas to gain financial rewards for themselves, their families and their political allies.

In some instance, the diplomatic musical chairs between Taiwan and the PRC has been even comical. During a governmental crisis a few years ago in Nauru, for example, the nation’s presidency changed hands three or four times in as many days. Prospective ambassadors from the PRC and the ROC were billeted in adjoining rooms in a hotel awaiting word on who would obtain the presidency that day and whether that president would recognize either the PRC of the ROC. Each ambassador-designate has his own nation’s flag and would run outside the hotel and raise it over a temporary embassy building when his country was anointed to represent China by Nauru’s “president for the day.”

Both the PRC and the ROC give massive financial aid to these struggling Pacific nations as well as free travel abroad for their respective leaders and their families. Financial aid comes in the form of road building, airport construction, agricultural and fishery assistance, and the like. When the government of the Marshall Islands, for example, ousted its long-time president earlier last year, the new president questioned the wisdom of maintaining ties with Taiwan and hinted he would switch sides and recognize Beijing instead. He has backtracked on this, however, and says he will continue recognizing Taiwan after being told the PRC will financially bail out the nation’s only air carrier, Air Marshall Islands, which has not been in operation since last year because its three airplanes have been laid up with engine and other problems. In another Pacific nation, Papua New Guinea, a further diplomatic flap relating to the game of PRC-ROC tug of war came to a head in May last year when the ROC foreign minister and several top aides were forced to resign following their botched and unsuccessful attempt to wrest recognition for the ROC from the PRC by offering $30 million to PNG officials.

Across the world in the poor and landlocked South American nation of Paraguay, the newly-elected president of that country, leftist Fernando Lugo who defeated the candidate of the long-ruling rightist Colorado Party that had always recognized the ROC, allegedly demanded $71 million in new aid from the ROC in exchange for continued ROC recognition. Lugo denies the allegation and he is still vacillating on whether to switch recognition to Beijing. The U.S. is in the middle of this diplomatic dance. The U.S. switched recognition to the PRC from the ROC in 1979, but continues to support Taiwan militarily. And the United States has permitted Taiwan to establish 12 ROC Economic and Cultural offices that serves as semi-diplomatic bastions, although the offices’ directors are accorded no official diplomatic recognition.

Two of these offices are in the Pacific; one in Honolulu and the other in Guam. The latter is located in Hagatna in the Bank of Guam Building on Chalan Santo Papa Rd. As this diplomatic combat between Beijing and Taipei continues unabated, all of us who wish to see the rise of political stability and economic growth in the Pacific should be concerned. Harmony and successful development in the Pacific region cannot reach their full potential if the negatives brought about by the bruising PRC-ROC diplomatic conflict increase in scope and fervor.