Taiwan has only 19 official friends left as the Dominican Republic gets wooed by Chinese highways.
The News Lens
Date: 2018/05/03
By: Stellina Chen
And then there were 19. The Dominican Republic on Tuesday severed diplomatic ties with Taiwan and established relations with China, tracking regional neighbors Panama (June 2017), and Costa Rica (June 2007), as well as African nation São Tomé and Príncipe (December 2016), in succumbing to the lure of red dollar diplomacy.
Reuters reported that China offered US$3.1 billion worth of investments and cut-price loans to entice Dominican Republic President Danilo Medina to turn his back on Taiwan, a sum that Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮) referred to as “an astronomical number” while expressing Taiwan’s deep sadness at the move.
The Reuters report, which cited an unnamed Taiwanese official as a source, added that the package included promises to build a US$400-million freeway, as well as US$1.6 billion for infrastructure projects and US$300 million for a new natural gas power plant. These investments would supplement a US$10-million aluminium tubing facility that opened in April, the first Chinese plant to break ground in the Caribbean country.
In any case, Santo Domingo had been inching away from Taiwan for several years, and perhaps the departure of such fickle friends is no great loss to Taiwan, even as the ongoing boxing of its interests by Beijing, spurred by the Communist Party’s antipathy to the administration of Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文), is hard to stomach.
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