Honduras breaks ties with Taiwan as Tsai visits the neighborhood

On Sunday, Chinese Foreign Minister Qín Gāng 秦刚 met with his Honduran counterpart Eduardo Enrique Reina in Beijing, and they signed a joint communiqué establishing diplomatic relations.

The Honduran Foreign Ministry released a statement recognizing that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory” and promised not “not to have any official relationship or contact with Taiwan again.” The conclusion of the decades-long relationship marks the ninth country to cut ties with Taiwan since current president Tsai Ing-Wen (蔡英文 Cài Yīngwén) took office in 2016.

Honduras’s president, Xiomara Castro has gone back-and-forth on the Honduras-Taiwan relationship since her presidential campaign days. Before her 2021 election, she raised the topic of switching diplomatic recognition. However, following a bilateral meeting in January 2022 with the vice president of Taiwan, William Lai Ching-te (賴淸德 Lài Qīngdé), Castro’s office released a statement saying that the “people of Honduras are always grateful to the people of Taiwan for their support that the two countries had “have worked together hand in hand for many years and hope to maintain this relationship.”

But on March 15, 2023, Castro used her Twitter account to announce that Honduras would establish diplomatic relations with China, a decision many think is tied to Honduras’s struggling economy and overwhelming debts. Honduran Foreign Minister Reina spoke on local television about the decision, saying, “We need investment…Honduras’s needs are enormous, and we haven’t seen that answer from Taiwan.”

Honduras wanted $2.45 billion and hydropower dams

According to Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (吳釗燮 Wú Zhāoxiè), on March 13 just before Castro’s original announcement, Reina wrote to Taiwan with a demand for $2.45 billion in aid, which would include the construction of a hospital and a dam, and debt forgiveness. Honduras currently owes $600 million to Taiwan.

According to Wu, Honduran officials compared Taiwan’s proposals with China’s. The request for $2.45 billion brought negotiations to a standstill.

Honduras is the fourth poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, and as of 2016 only 87% of the population had access to electricity. This is one reason why the government wanted Taiwan to build a dam.

Even before Castro tweeted the diplomatic switch, Sinohydra, a Chinese state-owned company, had already completed a different dam, the Patuca III. It began operations in 2020, producing 104 megawatts of hydropower. The project was originally supposed to have been constructed by Taiwan, but that plan fell through.

Honduras aims to be able to use renewable resources for 95% of its energy needs by the end of the decade, and its leadership believes China will be able to provide the resources to accomplish this goal.

Just a few weeks before Honduras switched diplomatic ties, Taiwan warned Honduras not to “quench its thirst with poison, even if fully parched by debt obligations.”

This was perhaps an oblique reference to another Latin American dam, Ecuador’s Coca Codo Sinclair Dam, which was built with $1.7 billion of Chinese aid, and by Chinese companies. Construction was tainted by labor issues and workers’ deaths, and by 2018— just two years after the dam became fully operational — over 7,000 cracks were identified in the generator hall, which reduced the dam to half its power generation capacity. Now there is a land erosion problem, push back from local indigenous people, and earlier this month Ecuador’s former President Lenin Moreno was charged with bribery over the dam’s construction.

Tsai Ing-wen in your area

In timing that could not be coincidental, Tsai Ing-wen yesterday began a 10–day trip to Guatemala and Belize, in a bid to preserve two of Taiwan’s remaining allies in the region.

Tsai’s trip includes two “transit stops” in the United States. Just yesterday she touched down in New York before flying to Guatemala. She will end her trip in Los Angeles where meeting with U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy might take place.

According to June Teufel Dreyer, a professor at the University of Miami’s Department of Political Science, Tsai’s visit also has another aim: “Tsai will want to shore up support with the remaining allies, and also remind voters back home that she hasn’t allowed China’s bullying to isolate Taiwan from the rest of the world.”

The Taiwanese presidential election takes place next year. Tsai has served two terms, but she will want her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to remain in power. (William Lai is the presumptive candidate.)

But the loss of Honduras will probably not damage Lai’s chances. Dreyer says that “It would be hard for the KMT as the main opposition party to take advantage of the loss of allies, since they’re in favor of closer ties between Taiwan and China.”

In fact, Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九 Mǎ Yīngjiǔ) — the KMT’s former chairman and Taiwan’s president from 2008 to 2016 — is in China right now on a 12-day trip during which he has called for peace in the Taiwan Strait, and saying that “people on both sides of the Strait belong to the same Chinese nation” (两岸人民同属中华民族), which is perhaps more accurately translated as: “We’re all Chinese!”

The DPP on Monday commented: “We should be more united, … but it’s regrettable that the KMT stands with the Chinese communists and ex-president Ma disregards public disapproval to visit China at this moment.”

But Ma’s visit is also a reminder that despite the growing support for a more assertive Taiwan in the U.S. and Europe, there is significant support in Taiwan itself for a warmer relationship with Beijing.