‘No cost too high for China’ — how Beijing is seeking to undermine Taiwanese diplomacy
New Delhi: In the last decade, China spent almost two billion dollars in overseas aid to nine countries, signalling an effort to check the countries from maintaining official diplomatic relations with Taiwan (Republic of China). These nine countries shifted their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) between 2016 and 2023.China gave roughly $1.89 billion in financial aid to Burkina Faso, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Solomon Islands, Kiribati, São Tomé and Príncipe, and the Dominican Republic, according to data published by AidData, a research lab at the College of William and Mary in the US.
“For Beijing, the aid to these countries is a political decision. For this, no cost is too high. It is a part of their insistence that there is only...