“China is willing to develop friendly and cooperative relations with Honduras and other countries in the world, on the basis of the one-China principle,” the spokesman said. Foreign Ministry Wang Wenbin.
“We welcome the pertinent statement by the Honduran side,” he added.
The Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced on Tuesday that his government will establish “official” relations with China, although he did not specify whether this implies a break with its traditional ties with Taiwan.
According to the “one China” principle, no country can maintain relations official diplomatic relations with Beijing and Taiwan.
China considers Taiwan, a democratically-ruled island, as part of its territory and vows to win it back one day.
TAIWAN’S POSITION
Instead, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of taiwan on Wednesday urged the Central American country to “carefully consider and don’t fall into the china trap and make the wrong decision to damage the long friendship between taiwan and Honduras”.
On Wednesday morning, the Honduran ambassador in Taipei, Harold Burgos, met with the Taiwanese vice minister of Foreign Affairs, the island’s foreign ministry said.
“The real goal of the false and attractive promises of the Chinese dictatorial regime is to take away our diplomatic allies, and to suppress the international space of taiwan“, the Taiwanese ministry said in a statement after the meeting.
– Chinese investments –
Under Beijing’s “one China” principle, no country can maintain simultaneous official diplomatic relations with China and Taipei.
China considers taiwan as part of his territory and promises to take it one day.
On February 2, Reina had announced negotiations with China, but to build a hydroelectric dam.
“What we are looking for, in this vision of creating more energy capacities for the country, is that [China] finance Patuca II”, Reina had said then, denying the versions that her country was going to establish relations with Beijing.
Reina met on January 1 with Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng in Brazil, within the framework of the inauguration of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
With a loan of about 300 million dollars, China financed the Patuca III dam, inaugurated in January 2021 by then-president Juan Orlando Hernández.
– What kind of relationships? –
On January 27, 2022, the Vice President of taiwan, William Lai Ching-te, attended Castro’s inauguration. Immediately afterwards, Foreign Minister Reina announced that relations with taiwan.
Honduran analyst Raúl Pineda told AFP that Castro’s tweet “does not clarify what kind of relations” they would be and that if “they are diplomatic, that will generate a break with taiwan and a distancing with the United States”.
“Right now China-US relations are very tense. From that point of view it would be a very unfortunate decision” by the Castro government, he added.
Alexander Huang, a political analyst at Taipei’s Tamkang University, considered that taiwan it has limited resources to resist China’s might in the diplomatic arena.
“Formal diplomatic allies of taiwan they are relatively small and have limited ability to withstand market attractions and business opportunities from mainland China,” Huang told AFP.
The United States and China thought they had a window to improve relations that now seems to have closed. Indeed, after a brief easing of tensions between the two powers, things got complicated again after Washington discovered an alleged Chinese spy balloon, which forced the cancellation of a visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing.
While, taiwan it lives under the constant threat of an invasion from China, which considers this territory its own and repeatedly warns of its intention to retake it, which causes concern in Washington.
Latin America has been the crucial scene of disputes between Beijing and Taipei since they separated in 1949 after the victory of communist forces in the Chinese civil war.
Aligned with Washington, all the Central American countries remained linked to Washington for decades. taiwan. But now only Honduras, Guatemala and Belize maintain ties to the island.
Costa Rica (in 2007), Panama (2017), El Salvador (2018) and Nicaragua (2021) broke with Taipei and linked up with Beijing, which has spent many years seeking to change sides of Taipei’s diplomatic allies.
Only 14 countries in the world recognize taiwanamong them ParaguayanHaiti and seven other small Caribbean and Pacific island nations.
