Analysis

Between Taiwan and Paraguay, a demanding friendship

Santiago Peña, of the ruling Colorado party, shortly before he became president, during a rally in Villa Elisa, April 26, 2023. AP - Jorge Saenz

Text by: Igor Gauquelin Follow

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This week, Taiwan maintained its state-to-state diplomatic relations with Paraguay, one of thirteen countries that still recognize the Republic of China in the world. On the occasion of the victory of conservative Santiago Peña, 44, in the elections, President Tsai Ing-wen was able to speak with him on the phone. But these close ties between the two countries also come at a cost.

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No, the whole world has not completely lost interest in the last elections in Paraguay, a Latin American state, it is true, very regularly forgotten in the news. There is even one country where the electoral events in Asunción were followed as if many things depended on it: the island of Taiwan, of which Paraguay is one of the last thirteen great companions.

In the rainy fresco of the Taiwanese diplomatic drama, which for decades has seen the Taipei regime lose one by one all the countries maintaining state-to-state relations with it, Friday, May 5 was a day apart, a brightening in the grayness. President Tsai In-wen was able to speak on an equal footing, by phone, with her future counterpart Santiago Peña, who promised to continue their friendship.

It was Ms. Tsai, head of state who is not in favor of reunification, who called the young elected president of the last South American country recognizing his authority. In their twenty-minute conversation, she congratulated him, and especially thanked him for having, during his campaign, "expressed his firm position in favor of maintaining and strengthening relations between Taiwan and Paraguay."

The future head of state of this landlocked American country, without access to the sea, replied that he would go to the archipelago to meet it "as soon as possible", confirming that his nation still set itself the goal of "continuing to deepen their exchanges and cooperation". "I look forward to working with you," for "the well-being of our people," Tsai Ing-wen tweeted after the discussion.

Thanks, President @iingwen , for the congratulations call. We will keep strengthening the historic ties between Paraguay and the Republic of China (Taiwan), and look forward to working together on mutually beneficial cooperation projects for our countries in the years ahead. https://t.co/qIMUMK2omT

— Santiago Peña (@SantiPenap) May 5, 2023

An anchored history

Taipei was particularly scrutinizing the electoral situation in Asunción this year because Peña's opponent, opposition candidate Efrain Alegre, announced during the campaign that he was considering reassessing bilateral relations with Taiwan for a first, if he won, a first in Paraguay. And the party of Santiago Peña, also an economist by profession, had promised not to change anything on its side.

Like his predecessors, Paraguay's newly elected president comes from the conservative Colorado party, which has been in power in Asunción for seven decades during the Cold War and the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. An old friend of the former single party of China and Taiwan, the Kuomintang, rival of the progressive party of Mrs. Tsai because became, with time and democracy, rather favorable to a reunification.

Since 1957, Paraguay has recognized the existence of the Republic of China, a mixed survival of the former Chinese nationalist regime, exiled with its late leader Chiang Kai-shek, then his son, in what Beijing still considers today, without concession, as a province that has been in rebellion since the victory of Mao Zedong's communists in 1949 and the advent of the People's Republic of China.

A whole Paraguayan community still lives in Taiwan today. Many of its members came for studies, some built prosperous lives there; of course, there are also Taiwanese in Paraguay. The BBC also devoted a report, during the campaign, to these Paraguayans living in unison the precariousness of Taiwanese daily life, all ready to join a bunker the day China attacks.

A friendship that costs a lot of money

But acknowledging Taiwan's existence in 2023 is no small feat. Because it is not possible to maintain any diplomatic or economic relations with mainland China, the world's second largest power, under such conditions. The PRC considers very clearly that this is the height of interference and draws all appropriate consequences from it. That is why, year after year, forced to choose, countries abandon Taipei.

In Paraguay, "there is a Taiwanese embassy, but there is no Chinese embassy," says Julien Demelenne, an EHESS PhD student living in Asunción. The trade balance is very unfavourable. Paraguay imports more than 4 billion dollars in terms of products from China, but it exports only 30 million, soybeans, meat, and always with intermediaries, via Argentina, Brazil...

In Paraguay, soybean fields eat into the forest. Jim Wickens/Ecostorm/2017

This is why the opposition, in its quest for power, is openly questioning. "There is internal pressure, not just external pressure, from the agribusiness market, meat and soybean producers, to have relations with China. For them, it is not very advantageous to have relations with Taiwan. Even though it's the second largest buyer of meat in the country, it's not enough.

Paraguay, a poor country, could negotiate better in the current geopolitical situation, Demelenne said. The dispute between China and Taiwan, with the United States never far away, is strong. Taiwan needs support and China is trying to take that support away from it. The researcher even observes, in extraofficial comments, that Beijing would be willing to finance projects. This is reminiscent of the – disappointed – hopes of Filipinos.

Some hesitation

Stéphane Corcuff is one of the researchers who has long followed the Taiwanese diplomatic drama. He explains that before 1978 and the recognition of the People's Republic of China by the United States, 1964 was probably the first instructive trauma for Taiwan. This was in Chiang Kai-shek's time; it had been necessary to break relations with Paris for lack of clarity in De Gaulle, an ally of the Second World War who was nevertheless trying to put the forms.

Taiwanese are used to identifying the warning signs of a coming diplomatic breakdown. "Then, it is sometimes formalized in a brutal and rapid way. Honduras has been a wonderful and terrible example," says Corcuff. The thirteen countries that continue to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan are not powers - in the Americas, we find Guatemala, Belize, Haiti and Saint Lucia. Also, the temptation of blackmail can be great.

Last year, Paraguay was able to give the impression of taking this path. On September 29, 2022, The Financial Times published an article making Mario Abdo Benítez, the outgoing president of Paraguay, say: "Taiwan invests more than 6 billion dollars in countries that do not have diplomatic relations with them, of this sum we want 1 billion to be placed in Paraguay.

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This will help us defend the idea that our strategic alliance with Taiwan is essential. " he justified. "Imagine what meat producers say when prices crash and they don't have access to the Chinese market... They tell you, "Please, we need to open up to this market." What does Taiwan give us, when we are a country that could sell all its soybean and meat production to China?

A resilient bond

Shortly after the publication of this article, Asunción went so far as to temper the remarks attributed to Mario Abdo by the Financial Times, through a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs distributed via the Paraguayan daily ABC Color.

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The president expressed the idea that Taiwan's outbound investment can partly go to our country, in order to take advantage of both the excellent investment conditions offered by Paraguay and the strategic relationship [between the two countries]. At no time was it a question of the president imposing conditions on [diplomatic] relations with Taiwan, let alone subjecting them to a specific amount.

In February 2023, Mr. Abdo himself rectified the situation, in Taipei alongside Ms. Tsai. "I would like to express my deepest and most sincere respect to the Taiwanese people for not abandoning their courageous struggle for freedom and safeguarding their sovereignty," he said. "Faced with continuous threats and a tense situation, the Taiwanese people have not abandoned their desire for peace, they continue to play the role of beacon of democracy in the region.

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I would like to thank President Abdo for supporting Taiwan's participation in international forums on many occasions," his counterpart said in his own speech. And Mr. Abdo thanked Taiwan again for its help during Covid, indicating that the Paraguayan economy had found a real breath of fresh air. Because it must be said that Taiwan helps Paraguay a lot, and without asking so many questions.

Paraguayan President Mario Abdo Benítez and his Taiwanese counterpart Tsai Ing-wen stand the red carpet in front of the guard of honour, in Taipei, February 16, 2023. AFP - SAM YEH

Shadow shares

From the Paraguayan point of view, especially within the party in power in Asunción continuously since 1947, "Taiwan offers a bit of easy cooperation, money without counterpart, without conditionality," explains Julien Demelenne. So the Colorado party has an interest in using all this money to make a clientelist policy. Because he has always governed with a clientelist policy. It can encourage a little bit of corruption. »

It should be recalled that during the campaign, President-elect Peña had to deal in the debates with the situation of his mentor in politics and active supporter, former President Horacio Cartes, described in 2022 as "significantly corrupt" by Washington, which banned him from entering or transacting in the United States, despite also a long companionship between the two countries. Corruption is wreaking havoc in Paraguay.

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Corruption among partners is a very important debate in Taiwan, which is also the subject of political and political attacks, because Taiwan being a democracy, the parties are attacking, confirms Stéphane Corcuff. It has the virtue of being a public debate, not as it used to be, and there is a kind of consensus that we have to stop. The acceleration of diplomatic kidnappings by China may not be unrelated.

►Read also: Paraguay's anti-drug prosecutor shot dead during his honeymoon

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There is a real conscience in Taiwan, if you have to die alone, you will die alone," says the researcher. But to evoke an anecdote that he paraphrases to his students, dating from the 1990s: one day, in an official meeting, the French interlocutor of the Taiwanese president at the time, Lee Teng-hui, asks the latter, rather bluntly, what is the point of paying billions to small states that could do absolutely nothing in the event of a conflict in the Strait. Mr. Lee replied in essence: if one day China reduces us to dust, but only one country at the UN says that it was not fair, we will not have died for nothing.

►Listen: Victory of the conservative presidential candidate in Paraguay

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