![]() Despite this privilege that China enjoyed, Taiwan managed to establish diplomatic relations with six of the fourteen Pacific islands nations due to its impressive economic growth and financial capacity to furnish the island nations with handsome and much-needed financial assistance. For Fiji 73 was a time when we had to switch from the Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China” (Interview SP005, 21 March 2019). According to a Fijian politician, “China is a member of the UN Security Council and Chinese Taiwan was there before 1973. This UN leverage appeared alluring to most Pacific nations thus preferring China to Taiwan. To Taipei’s dismay, Beijing had an upper hand over Taiwan because of its “UN leverage.” Bearing that in mind, China and Taiwan both started pumping aid for diplomatic recognition to the newly de-colonised nations around the world particularly to the small island nations of the Pacific. The newly independent nations were in desperate need for foreign assistance to address their burgeoning socio-economic needs. This Sino-Taiwan diplomatic soft war coincided with the wind of decolonisation that was sweeping through the developing and underdeveloped world. The US also encouraged its allies Japan and Germany to engage more with China, so much so, that during 1970s Japan was China’s biggest foreign aid donor constructing airports, seaports, railways, roads and hydropower dams (Nowak, 2015).įurthermore, as the UN permanent seat and veto right was bestowed upon PRC, Taiwan fought back and intensified its diplomatic competition with China by providing development aid to cash-starved countries around the world in return for diplomatic recognition. Thus, the US reduced its level of cooperation with Taiwan and increased it with China. The US and its allies also recognised PRC in a bid to isolate the Soviet Union. In 1971, however, ROC lost the UN Seat to People’s Republic of China (PRC) by failing to gather enough international support and backing. The Republic of China (ROC) enjoyed the luxury of occupying the UN Seat. Enjoying support from the United States, Taiwan continued to compete with China for diplomatic recognition globally (Atkinson, 2010). The Sino-Taiwan rivalry goes back to 1950s when the US intervened in Taiwan Strait following the Korean War and prevented the complete Chinese takeover of the island nation and annexing it to mainland China. Taiwan has equally been persistent in its pursuit of diplomatic recognition to garner international support through aid diplomacy. ![]() In 2017, China pledged US$4 billion to the island nations for high visibility infrastructure projects across the region (Lyons, 2018). It is believed that it will not take long for China to overtake Australia as the largest creditor to the region after it “committed to spending more than four times as much as Australia” (Lyons, 2018). The two Asiatic economic giants have been appropriating colossal sums of their aid funds to the developing and least developed island nations for diplomatic recognition. ![]() Over the past two decades, there has been an unprecedented growth and expansion in the level and magnitude of Sino-Taiwan aid competition in the Pacific region.
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