LIKE South Africa during the early days of the Mandela administration, Honduras in Central America has embraced reality by recognising the UN-endorsed One-China policy.
President Xiomara Castro, the first woman elected to the position of head of state in the history of the Republic of Honduras, last week announced her government was cutting its decades-long diplomatic ties with Taiwan.
In a statement, President Castro’s government said it “recognises the existence of just one China in the world”. It added that the leadership in Beijing “is the only legitimate government that represents all of China” and that Taiwan “is an inalienable part of Chinese territory”.
In the early 1970s, UN Resolution 2758 gave the green light as the Republic of China was replaced by the People’s Republic of China as the only recognised government of the people of China. This repositioning of China also bolstered China’s standing in international relations, particularly as one of the only five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
When Mandela’s ANC-led government assumed power in April 1994, they led a rapid realignment of South Africa’s global diplomatic relations. Mandela was fearless and outspoken in defence of his geopolitical choices, embracing the One China policy that recognises Taiwan as part of mainland China. Despite an explicit chorus of disapproval, the Mandela administration was vocal in justifying its public embrace of leaders such as Cuba’s Fidel Castro, Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Palestine’s Yasser Arafat, who were all considered pariahs in the West.
Last week, President Castro exhibited Mandela-like brevity by abandoning the group of only 12 countries – out of 193 UN member-states – who still hold formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Take note of who they are: Marshall Islands, Palau, Republic of Nauru, Holy See, eSwatini, Tuvalu, Republic of Guatemala, Republic of Paraguay, Saint Lucia, Haiti and Belize, according to the Taiwanese Foreign Ministry.
The US encourages more to “recognise” Taiwan and establish bilateral diplomatic ties with the island. However, Washington itself does not “recognise” Taipei in that way. Instead, the relations are on paper cordial and limited, and Washington’s antagonism towards China’s rise as a superpower is what draws it closer to Taiwan to serve as a “necessary distraction and irritation” to China’s development, peace and stability.
President Castro is a name that must be highlighted again. Watch this space – it will make waves in the subdued region, although some fear that sooner rather than later she could fall victim to economic sanctions, characterised by a blockade à la Cuba and Venezuela, or even (God forbid!) suffer some inexplicable “accident”.
Castro is a breath of fresh air across Latin America with her very public display of independence of thought and political principle. Her husband is former Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, who was removed from power in a suspected CIA-sponsored military coup in 2009. The US has about seven military bases in Honduras, a spine-chilling reality to live with.
Castro is a leader of the leftist Liberty and Refoundation Party, which has won the majority support of the electorate through their popular policies, which are based on “democratic socialism”. This has attracted a closer scrutiny of the nearby superpower that is the US, where the hawks are intolerant of the perceived non-democratic regimes that live under constant fear of regime-change.
President Castro is already considered “brave” by her apparent pursuit of her left-leaning policies, in spite of the ever-present threats that such politics attract from nearby.
Hardly a fortnight after announcing the termination of diplomatic ties with Taipei, President Castro’s administration this week announced she would be undertaking a state visit to China, where she would be a special guest of President Xi Jinping.
The two leaders are expected to sign ground-breaking economic deals aimed at lessening Honduras’ dependence on the US and its Western allies. They would also bolster their political ties and cement their new bilateral ties, which would certainly bode well for the economic emancipation of the Republic of Honduras.
China’s Foreign Ministry heaped praise on Honduras’ closer diplomatic shift toward Beijing, describing the move as “the right choice”. The ministry further declared that “engaging in separatist activities for Taiwan independence is against the will and interests of the Chinese nation and against the trend of history, and is doomed to a dead end”.
The timing of President Castro’s visit is particularly of great interest. It comes in the wake of a highly controversial visit to the US by Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen. Despite appeals by Beijing that her visit to the US would only serve to escalate the deepening tension in the US-China relations, President Tsai Ing-wen undertook the visit fully encouraged by the Biden administration.
Only last August, President Tsai Ing-wen welcomed former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Taipei, almost triggering a military confrontation in the Taiwan Strait. Since then, the US-China relationship has continued to deteriorate. Washington has pledged to supply military equipment to Taiwan, and has also promised international diplomatic support to keep Beijing at bay.
Frighteningly, Washington has publicly exhibited a great appetite for military confrontation with China over Taiwan, a proposition that is simply too ghastly to contemplate between the two superpowers.
Zhu Fenglian, a spokeswoman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said President Tsai Ing-wen’s visit and her activities in the US would only serve to raise tension between the island and Beijing.
She warned: “It will be another provocation that seriously violates the One-China principle, harms China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, and destroys peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. We firmly oppose this and will definitely take measures to resolutely fight back.”
The main trouble at the centre of the frosty relations between Washington and Beijing is America’s hegemony that blatantly undermines multilateralism.
President Xi has constantly expressed China’s foreign policy position of international cooperation, and shared prosperity and development with other nations, irrespective of their size or shape. Respect for the sovereignty of all states, big or small, is also at the centre of China’s foreign policy. However, this position is constantly on a collision course with Washington’s insistence on a “rules-based world order”, which refers to a Western-approved democracy.
This, according to the US and its Western allies in the EU, is practically a “non-negotiable” and is punishable by economic sanctions, international isolation, military confrontation, or all of the above.
President Castro’s realignment of Honduras towards the East is in line with the international trend. Once upon a time the West truly ruled the world. Colonial history can attest to this. But that is history. Nations have reawakened. And the West is stuck with a terrible hang-over.
Imperialism is an evil that former colonies across the global south are not prepared to salute any longer. This is the reality that the Western powers, in their collective, must wake up to. The emergence and rise of China, coupled with the nuclear superpower that is Russia in a post-Soviet Union era, continue to serve as a magnet to hordes of colonial and imperialism’s “surviving nations” across the globe.
As Mandela indicated at the time – and I paraphrase: Friends in difficult times will always be friends, particularly when times change for the better.
Russia supported Sub-Saharan Africa’s wars of liberation. China, too, trained and armed liberation armies against brutish, racist, Western-oriented regimes. As for President Castro, she is a woman of substance and amazing courage. In describing her inspirational geopolitical stance that could come at a great cost to her political career, or even life itself, I am tempted to refer to Fanon and Biko: “It is better to die for an ideal that will live, than to live for an ideal that will die.”