Guatemala backs Taiwan, rejects Beijing

Beijing is putting pressure on Guatemala to switch diplomatic recognition of Taiwan to Beijing. Mainland China has offered the Central American country vaccines as an inducement, said Guatemala’s president Alejandro Giammattei in an interview with the Financial Times.  

“We are the last country in which China has not succeeded in inserting itself,” said Giammattei during a visit to Washington D.C. last week. “The Chinese are pressuring us a lot, they are offering us a lot . . . they did offer [vaccines but] we didn’t accept.”

Taiwan only has 14 diplomatic allies left, which are mostly in Latin America and the Caribbean. Guatemala is one of the largest economies that still recognize Taiwan as China.

Over the past few years, Beijing has lobbied in the region to persuade countries to change their recognition. El Salvador, Panama and the Dominican Republic have all switched theirs to Beijing in the past four years.

On Thursday, Nicaragua decided to cut ties with Taiwan and instead recognize mainland China. In return, Nicaragua received 200,000 doses of China’s Sinopharm vaccine. The president-elect of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, has also promised to switch to mainland China when she assumes power.

Giammattei said that Guatemala’s loyalty to Taiwan was a “question of principle.”

During the pandemic, “the first [bio]security clothing which they sent to Guatemala . . . was sent by Taiwan when nobody could get hold of it because it was out of stock; the first respirators which arrived in Guatemala . . . came from Taiwan,” said the Guatemalan president.