Paraguay on Thursday last week expelled Chinese diplomat Xu Wei (徐偉), accusing him of “interference in domestic affairs,” and declared him persona non grata.
Xu, a senior Chinese envoy to Latin America who was in Paraguay’s capital, Asuncion, for an annual UNESCO meeting, skipped the meeting and instead met with Paraguayan lawmakers to encourage them to ditch Taiwan and switch recognition to China.
“It is either China or Taiwan. The government of Paraguay should make a correct decision as soon as possible,” Xu said in comments recorded at the Paraguayan Congress, adding that relations with China would come with increased opportunities for trade and “thousands of other advantages … you can earn more.”
Xu even openly spoke to the media afterward and bragged that forging diplomatic ties with China, instead of Taiwan, would pay economic dividends.
The Paraguayan Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that it revoked Xu’s visa and gave him 24 hours to leave the country.
China has long targeted Taiwan’s diplomatic allies to lure and coerce them into shifting to China, using the promise of lucrative trade agreements or the threat of diplomatic suppression to strongarm them into supporting “one China” and isolating Taiwan. China has deployed such tactics to expand its power in Latin America, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world, with the aim of challenging US-aligned democracies and the rules-based international order.
Taiwan’s Pacific ally Palau has increasingly accused China of bullying, such as weaponizing Chinese tourism to threaten the nation’s travel industry, launching cyberattacks, illegal incursions and even firing a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean without warning, which all have undermined regional peace.
Guatemala, a diplomatic ally of Taiwan in Central America, is also a target of Chinese coercion. Guatemalan journalist Jorge Jacob has decried that Beijing has imposed its conditions in the style of a gangster, offering “silver or lead,” and that his country has begun to suffer from the neighborhood bully. China has imposed trade barriers, hindering Guatemalan businesspeople’s access to Chinese products, while blocking its own people from buying coffee and macadamia nuts from Guatemala. He warned that “one can accept Chinese money, supposedly free, but it always brings conditions that you must abide by or suffer the consequences.”
Jacob added that one of China’s biggest inducements to persuade nations to bow to it is free entry to the gigantic Chinese market. However, this “is nothing more than a mirage,” as exports have grown somewhat, but not at all proportional to the size of the Chinese market.
The Chinese diplomat’s infiltration in Paraguay has again demonstrated the predicament faced by small nations subjected to bullying by China. As the world’s second-largest economy, China can afford to bully almost anyone. The international community should also see how China is abusing its participation in international organizations such as UNESCO for its own interests.
Paraguay’s move to expel the Chinese diplomat has not only upheld the nation’s sovereignty, but also reaffirmed its 67-year friendship with Taiwan.
As Paraguayan Ambassador to Taiwan Carlos Jose Fleitas Rodriguez wrote in the Taipei Times in October: “Paraguay is on the right side of history … to be on the right side of history means sharing the same civic values and democratic principles… That is why cooperation between Paraguay and Taiwan has as one of its cornerstones the sharing of values such as the unrestricted validity of democracy, which guarantee justice and the well-being of our states.”
Taiwan and Paraguay, as well as other allies, should stand together to fight against the bullying authoritarian.
