As Taiwan’s top representative in Saint Lucia prepares to return home, Ambassador Peter Chen will surely be thinking hard about his island’s immediate future, as tensions grow in the strait that artificially separates the island from the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
Cross-strait tensions have deepened of late, thanks to increasingly bellicose statements by the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP) new leader Lai Ching-te (also called William Lai).
The DPP won the January 2024 Taiwan elections but with a minority of votes in the island’s local legislature, where the major opposition Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) and others now have more seats.
Lai is unprecedentedly fast-tracking actions in office that can quicker lead to military intervention by Beijing, to preserve the status quo and prevent a desperate unilateral declaration of independence by Taipei.
He replaced Taiwan’s first woman leader, Tsai Ing-wen, who served two successive four-year terms presiding over the decline in Taipei’s international support.
Under Tsai, who first took office in May 2016, Taipei’s list of ‘international allies’ — member-states of the United Nations (UN) that recognise non-independent Taiwan – declined by more than half, with only 12 when she demitted office in May 2024.
But in his first six months, Lai has worked overtime to irk the PRC by making inflammable statements and actions that erase and rewrite Taiwan’s history — and now by his visits (in the past week) to the US mainland, Hawaii and the Pacific region.
His visit followed a US $386 million arms deal with the US, also loudly condemned by Beijing.
To make up for the serious depreciation in Taiwan’s international support, Lai and the DPP are fast-tracking efforts to revive support in the Pacific Islands region, where his predecessor had sought to broaden exchanges with the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, Australia and New Zealand.
On taking office in 2016, Tsai announced a ‘Southbound Policy’ that eventually, eight years later, failed to yield the political or diplomatic results she had imagined and promised.
Lai has also been counting on accelerating US-backed support for Taiwan’s hardly-cloaked wishes to declare independence, despite Beijing’s clear indication that the PRC and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are more than ready to prevent artificial separation of the island from the mainland.
Washington accepted the ‘One China’ policy in 1971, dumping the Republic of China on Taiwan (ROC) which had been recognised by the UN after the KMT fled to the island in December 1949.
In 1971, the UN General Assembly passed resolution 27584 on the “Restoration of the lawful rights of the People’s Republic of China in the United Nations” and recognised the PRC as the “only lawful representative of China to the UN.”
The resolution also expelled “the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek (Taiwan) from the place they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all its organisations.”
The US recognition of the PRC was followed by 14 other nations that broke with Taiwan in 1972.
However, driven by its expansionist Cold War policy in the Asia-Pacific region and the South and East China Seas, the US would – years later — pass legislation to allow it to legally arm Taiwan against the PRC, in the name of helping it protect itself from an aggressive PRC.
The US also adopted a grafted policy of ‘Plausible Deniability’ to characterise its clear political, economic and military support for and recognition of non-independent Taiwan, even while supposedly originally accepting the ‘One China’ policy.
The KMT eventually changed from its position of automatic hostility to the PRC and in the 1980s actively engaged with the PRC, opening up to political discussions and positive Cross-Strait economic and other ties.
This led to mutual adoption by Beijing and Taipei’s political leaders of a ‘1992 Consensus’ that allowed both sides to recognise there was only One China but with differing interpretations.
The 1992 Consensus eased Cross-Strait tensions, but the DPP – under disgraced leader Chen Shui-bian – blew it apart.
The KMT returned to office in 2008 under Ma Ying-jieu, whose administration spent eight years bringing the mainland and the island closer than ever during his two successive terms.
The DPP’s return under Tsai in 2016 saw eight years of dismantling of the bridges of friendship built under Ma and since May 2024, Lai has been increasingly using pro-independence and separatist language to challenge Beijing.
Lai is encouraged by the fact that Washington continues to engage in expensive and expansive arms deals with Taiwan, the latest coming early under his watch.
But never mind Washington’s political support for the DPP’s secessionist plans, the US military has long insisted it has no appetite to go to war with China over Taiwan.
Indeed, China’s President Xi Jinping has repeatedly warned that in the current circumstances, ‘reunification’ (of the island and the mainland) might be closer than ever.
Under the KMT and Ma, Taiwan demonstrated it can peacefully coexist with the mainland, but the DPP insists on severing historical ties in ways that Beijing will never allow.
Such a policy puts war before peace, especially through the current conflagrations in the strait and the wider region involving challenges to China by the US, backed by Japan, South Korea, Philippines, France, UK and Australia.
Taiwan’s remaining five Caribbean allies – Belize, Haiti, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and St. Vincent and the Grenadines – alongside Guatemala and Paraguay in Central America, form the majority of Taiwan’s 12 remaining allies.
Only three islands in East Asia and the Pacific region still recognize Taiwan, with only one in Africa – and only The Holy See (Vatican) in Europe.
Therefore, Taiwan’s Caribbean allies will – sooner than later – have to make a decision on how long they’ll continue to sustain their unsustainable ties with Taipei.
As China continues to rise at all levels on the world stage, it will soon be impossible for Taiwan’s remaining friends to continue ignoring history and the world’s second-largest economy.
And from all indications, it’s just a matter of time…