Honduras switches allegiance to China
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report, produced since 1967. The full report can be accessed here: Latin American Weekly Report?- 16 March 2023
Another brick in Taiwan’s crumbling diplomatic edifice in Central America will shortly be removed after Honduran President Xiomara Castro announced on 14 March that she had had instructed her foreign minister, Eduardo Enrique Reina, to commence negotiations to open diplomatic relations with mainland China. When the process is complete, it will leave just 13 countries worldwide that recognise Taiwan, seven of them in Latin America and the Caribbean. The timing of the switch will come as a blow to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen ahead of a trip to the sub-region and onwards visit to the US, which?is also likely to be dismayed by further evidence of China’s success at supplanting Taiwan in the isthmus in recent years.
President Castro offered little in the way of an explanation for the diplomatic shake-up, merely describing the move as “a sign of my determination to fulfil the government plan and expand borders”. Reina went into more detail the following day, saying that “China is a reality that nobody can deny and a reality which we have to approach in search of benefits for the Honduran people”, adding, pointedly, that the country needed “more investment and trade” as it was “up to its neck” in financial and debt-related problems. Reina also revealed that he had been in contact with China’s ambassador to Costa Rica, Tang Heng, to “initiate diplomatic conversations towards signing the necessary accords”.
China’s diplomatic incursion into Central America at Taiwan’s expense began in Costa Rica in June 2007 when then-president Oscar Arias (2006-2010) severed the country’s six-decade-long ties with Taiwan, defending the decision as “an act of elemental realism due to the growing importance of China in global affairs”. This did not immediately set off a ‘domino effect’ in the region, with Panama the next to embrace Beijing’s ‘One China’ policy, a full decade later in June 2017, but things have moved swiftly since then. The Dominican Republic switched from Taipei to Beijing in May 2018, followed by El Salvador in August 2018, and Nicaragua in December 2021 in search of increased Chinese trade and investment opportunities.
China’s foreign ministry said it would move to develop “friendly and cooperative relations” with Honduras. Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it had expressed “serious concerns” to the Castro administration, advising it to weigh up its decision carefully, rather than sever ties which have been in place since 1941 and “fall into China’s trap”.
Castro’s decision to switch recognition to China comes at a time when US-China relations are strained over a range of issues, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and electronic surveillance, as well as China’s increasing belligerence towards Taiwan, which it views as an inalienable part of its national territory. China’s President Xi Jinping underlined his determination to regain Taiwan at an annual parliamentary meeting on 13 March, vowing to “unswervingly advance the cause of national rejuvenation and reunification”.
Honduras’ switch to China is a geopolitical boon for Beijing, days before Taiwan’s President Tsai visits Guatemala and Belize – the only two remaining countries on the isthmus still to recognise Taipei?– as part of a trip that will also involve a transit though the US to meet the speaker of the US House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, in California.
The Caribbean countries that remain aligned with Taiwan are Belize, Haiti, St Kitts & Nevis, St Lucia (which in 2007 famously caused a diplomatic ruckus by re-establishing ties with Taiwan after 10 years of adhering to the ‘One China’ policy), and St Vincent & the Grenadines. Paraguay also retains ties with Taiwan.
The planned US leg of the trip has been singled out for criticism by Beijing. According to Antonio Yang at the national defence university in Tegucigalpa, the timing of Castro’s announcement may be linked to that trip. “From Beijing’s perspective,” he told the UK’s?Financial Times, “it is a good time to undermine Tsai’s foreign policy efforts”.?
The US is Honduras’ top trading partner, with several local assembly plants serving the US automobile and clothing industries. Honduras is also traditionally seen as a close strategic ally for Washington, hosting a US Air Force base regarded as critical to fighting regional drug trafficking organisations. The US ambassador to Honduras, Laura Dogu, met the Honduran directorate of anti-drug policing (DNPA) recently, on 24 February, to discuss cracking down on drug trafficking and coca production, amid evidence of a sharp increase.
Bilateral security cooperation. Bilateral security cooperation is far too important a matter for the US to allow to be affected by Honduras’ decision to switch allegiance to China from Taiwan, in spite of concerns about China’s increasing presence in the US ‘backyard’. Since the first coca plantations were discovered in Honduras in April 2017 in a mountainous area in the eastern department of Olancho, bordering Nicaragua, coca cultivation appears to have increased significantly in the country, although the stratospheric increase in eradication of coca in 2022 most likely owes to the fact that President Castro took office in January of that year, succeeding Juan Orlando Hernández (2014-2022), who was soon afterwards extradited to the US to face charges of drug trafficking.
Honduran authorities located 945,000 coca leaf bushes and a drug laboratory for processing cocaine in an operation carried out on an 88-hectare estate in Limones in the municipality of Catacamas, in Olancho, the police reported on 13 March, as well as confiscating precursor chemicals, and a firearm plantation in one of the biggest finds ever in Honduras. The authorities are investigating to whom the land belongs.
In previous years, coca plantations were concentrated in the department of Colón, especially in the municipality of Iriona, but they have now shifted to the contiguous municipalities of Patuca and Catacamas in Olancho, which appears to be the current epicentre of coca plantation in the country. A total of 1.36m coca bushes have been destroyed so far this year, according to police figures, 20% of the figure for the whole of 2022. At this rate the figure for 2023 will surpass that for last year. In the last six years, plantations have been found in Olancho, Colón, Yoro, Gracias a Dios, El Paraíso, and Cortés, no fewer than one-third of the country’s departments.
Coca bushes destroyed in Honduras (official figures)
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report, produced since 1967. The full report can be accessed here: Latin American Weekly Report?- 16 March 2023
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