China and the Lusophone African Micro-States

Bilateral relations between China and the Lusophone African Micro-States (LAMS - Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe) dates back from the moment of the each state’s formation. China figures among the first states to recognize the independent and sovereign statehood of these states. The recognition was the coronation of a decade-long cooperation and support that China has provided to the liberation movements in these states. From the early 1960s to the mid 1970s, the dominant national liberation movement in these LAMS – namely the PAIGC for the case of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde and the MLSTP for the case of São Tomé and Príncipe – were actively supported by China. China had provided not only material aid but also was one of the key diplomatic allies in the international forums, particularly in the United Nations.

It is natural that good relations followed in the aftermath of the independence and with the ascension to power by the former leaders of the national liberation movements. At least two main reasons explain this state of good relationship between China and the LAMS. The first reason has to do with the post-independence foreign policy of these newly formed states. All of these three Lusophone African states were declaredly pan-Africanist, non-aligned and “Third-Worldist. As China was portraying itself - and actually perceived by other states – as a developing state, and a state that takes no sides in the West-East conflict of the Cold War, it was likely that diplomatic friendship could be established. The second reason for this post-independence strengthening of relations between China and the LAMS has to do with the post-colonial socio-economic reality of these African states. At the time of independence all of them were in state of economic paralysis – if not ruin. In the case of Guinea-Bissau which had gone through more than a decade of armed struggle the country’s rural economy was in a state of chaos. Some foreign observers were actually very skeptical about the political viability of these states, particularly the case of the islands of Cape Verde, a state believed it would never make it (Lopes 1995). For this reason, post-independence political leadership designed “open-door” diplomacy of accepting aid from whoever is willing to cede it.

In the 1990s, however, fractures in the once well-established China-Lusophone African micro-states relations started to appear. First, on May 26 1990, Guinea-Bissau switched sides and established diplomatic relations with Taiwan. Then, on May 6 1997, it was STP’s turn to switch sides. One needs to explain this situation, which has a lot to do with a change in Taiwanese diplomacy. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Taiwan’s political leadership became more assertive in advancing the independentist cause before the African leaders. For a better and more extensive explanation of this new diplomatic situation, one needs first to delve into the issue of Taiwan’s international standing.

Taiwan is a paradigmatic case of an “internationally failing state.” To understand this concept, one needs to look at the so-called “failed state thesis.” According to the failed state model, a state is considered to be failed if it lacks statehood capacity within its territorially defined borders (Reno 1998; Zartman 1995). Domestically statehood capacity has to do with the Weberian concept of the state as the compulsory institution with the monopoly of legitimate violence over its population within its territory (Weber 1956 [1919]). By analogy and contrast, an “internationally failing state” is a state that is continuous lacking statehood capacity in the international arena. This is particularly in what concerns the so-called ius inter gentes, the diplomatic law that provides as a right of the state mutual recognition through exchange of state representatives. Taiwan’s major problem, therefore, is that its “juridical statehood” (Jackson and Rosberg 1986) is waning to the point of collapsing, for, as it has been argued “[a] state is not a state unless it is recognized by other states” (Dunn 2001: 59).

In less than half of a century, Taiwan has moved from the center of international politics, as one of the permanent seats in the United Nations Security Council, to a position that the international relations literature designate as “pariah state.” At the same time, Taiwan in itself is a paradox. Its decreasing international status is going along with the increasing status as the world’s economic tiger. This situation is best summarized by Chan (1997: 37), who has written that “Taiwan is financially rich but diplomatically poor.”

After 1971, the year in which the UN General Assembly voted for the displacement of the Taipei by Beijing, Taiwan’s international standing started to become extremely fragile. State after state moved their recognition away from Taiwan to the mainland. The situation worsened when Taiwan’s arch-friend, the United States, decided to recognize the PRC in 1979. As a result of this international trend, by the late 1980s, less than three dozens of states had diplomatic relations with Taipei.

In the late 1980s Taipei’s government went on to devise a new global diplomatic offensive, in order to escape the “diplomatic poverty.” The new “flexible diplomacy,” as it is called, considers increasing Taiwan’s international visibility of Taiwan by whatever means it takes, including, but not limited to, foreign aid (Tubilewicz 2002: 792). Taiwan’s new diplomacy is a two-edged sword. In one edged it attacks the problem of international recognition within international organizations, particularly the ones of universal vocation – the case of the United Nations system. In the other edge, it attacks the problem of decreasing bilateral recognition, by luring states to recognize it. Let me develop these two points.

A corollary of the “flexible diplomacy,” a new diplomatic scheme focusing on the attainment of membership in the United Nations, was devised and put into effect in Taiwan. As mentioned by Chang and Lim (1997), the idea of Taiwan’s bid for membership in the United Nations was first expressed in 1986 by the then illegal party, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). This idea was later picked up by the Taiwanese Government, which officially requested UN membership on April 1993, under the policy of “One China, two governments.”

This diplomatic machination follows two complementary tactics. The first tactic, which can be called a direct action, implies the seeking of UN membership by the Taiwanese government itself.[1] The second tactic, a sort of a proxy action, implies that pro-Taiwan member states of the United Nations to submit proposals to its General Assembly with the objective of changing, re-interpreting or even nullifying the UNGA Resolution 2758.[2] Thus, as recently as 2000, a group of 12 member states[3] of the United Nations petitioned General Assembly for “the inclusion in the agenda of the fifty-fifth session of the Assembly of a supplementary item entitled ‘Need to Examine the Exceptional International Situation Pertaining to the Republic of China on Taiwan, to Ensure that the Fundamental Rights its Twenty-Three Million People to Participate in the Work and Activities of the United Nations is Fully Respected.’ (Joint Proposal cited in Huang 2003). Because China exercises a lot of influence among a good number of the United Nations member states, the proposal was rejected and it was not included in the General Assembly’s agenda.

Through the vehicle of flexible diplomacy, and equipped with enormous amount of cash for disbursing to potential diplomatic partners, Taiwan was able to gain and control some diplomatic positions in Africa at the expense of China.[4] It has been argued that these diplomatic victories were the result of the attractive aid programs designed by Taiwan (Lin Bih-jaw cited in Chan 1997: 48). Foreign aid, as it is understood in some circles, is a “tool of statecraft [that helps] to encourage or reward politically desirable behavior on the part of the government receiving it” (Carol Lancaster cited in Cumming 2001: 1). This means that, most of the time, powerful and rich states have a hidden agenda behind the disbursing of the aid. Foreign aid is a state’s behavior-modification or status-quo preserving tool par excellence.

Part of the argument developed in this paper is that Chinese engagement with the Lusophone African micro-states is a political reaction against the diplomatic offensive launched by Taiwan during the 1990s, which concentrated in the search for diplomatic recognition out of the small and economically poor states (Taylor 2002: 126).

Having said all of this, I can now go on to explain the implications of this new Taiwanese diplomatic strategy relative to the LAMS. From any perspective analyzed, the LAMS are “aid dependent states.” As this concept is understood in the literature,

a]id dependence can be defined as a situation in which a country cannot perform many of the core functions of government, such as operations and maintenance, or the delivery of basic public services, without foreign aid funding and expertise. As a proxy for this, we use a measure of “intensity” of aid: countries receiving aid at levels of 10 percent of GNP or above. (Bräutigam 2000)

As analyzed by Goldsmith (2001: 126), since the independence in 1975 the LAMS have enjoyed at least ten percent of their budgets from foreign donors.[5] With the change of the regime aid in the post-Cold War era, when the traditional Western donors and the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) alike attached economic and political conditionalities, Taiwan saw this as a fortunate window of opportunity. It is in this context that one needs to understand the diplomatic shift of the governments in Guinea-Bissau and STP. Lured by the Taiwanese generosity, Guinea-Bissau and STP opted for recognition of Taiwan.

For the political class in these states, recognition comes with a price. Recognition is provided to the biggest foreign aid – this was the case of Guinea-Bissau, which recognized Taiwan from 1990 to 1998. Guinea-Bissau went back to have relations with China as a consequence of the Chinese willingness to pick on the tap of foreign aid. It has been argued that China will keep or increase the levels of the foreign aid to Guinea Bissau as a counter-measure of a possible “about-face” to Taiwan. (Horta 2007).

Taiwanese generosity, however, did not entice the government of Cape Verde to switch side in the international game of recognition. Although it has be argued that Cape Verde was less vulnerable to Taiwan’s “check book diplomacy,” as a result of her outstanding records of economic management and development (Horta 2008), the true reasons why the government of Cape Verde sided with China has to do more with the China’s own version of the “check book diplomacy.” During the 1990s and early 2000s, Cape Verde benefited from various “prestige projects” by the Chinese government. Since the end of the Cold War, Cape Verde benefited from a number of projects coming out of the Chinese foreign aid.[6]

Although this diplomacy of checkbook is usually denounced by Beijing as “bribery” (Taylor 2002: 134), it has been argued that China “routinely use[s] aid as an inducement to African governments which ha[ve] established ties with Taiwan to switch their diplomatic allegiance, undertaking for good measure to finish off any projects which Taiwanese technicians might have begun in the countries involved” (Phillip Snow cited in Taylor 2002: 134). From the economic or commercial point of view, these small states are economically insignificant for China and Taiwan (or for the international trade, for that matter). Unlike the big and resource-rich Lusophone African states, these small states do not attract key Chinese economic players. The participation of economic actors such as big Chinese multinationals – in different areas of economic activity – or even of the Chinese Exim Bank is extremely weak. Trade relations between these states and China are dominated by Chinese individual or by family-owned small business. As it has been argued in the case of Chinese “baihuo” in the islands of Cape Verde (Østbø and Carling 2005), Chinese businesses have entered the region on their own and have no institutional link with the local Chinese embassy. For this reason, their impact is either limited or even negative in the implementation of the Chinese policies toward these states.

It can be concluded, therefore, that the only possible rationale for the diplomatic dispute between Taipei and is to acquire diplomatic stronghold.[7] These states can be thought to be diplomatic significant to the extent that they can aid in Chinese efforts to isolate Taiwan in the international arena. The case of São Tomé and Príncipe and Guinea-Bissau shows that Taiwan was highly engaged in the Lusophone African space. As a corollary of this situation, there is a strong argument to be made that China had to develop its own version of “Checkbook diplomacy” in order to counterattack Taiwanese diplomatic offense in this part of the world. The primary concern of the Chinese political action toward these two states was (and still is) to keep them away from the seductive diplomacy of the Taiwanese government.

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[1] This was the case when the then Taiwan’s foreign Minister Frederick Chen announced that Taiwan would formally apply to rejoin the United Nations (Chang and Lim: 1997).

[2] The United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758 (XXVI), adopted on October, 25, 1971, decided that “to restore all its rights to the People’s Republic of China and to recognize the representatives of its government as the only legitimate representatives of China to the United Nations, and to expel forthwith the representatives of Chaing Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organizations related to it.”

[3] These were: Burkina Faso, the Gambia, Honduras, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Nicaragua, Saint Vincent and Grenadines, Senegal, Solomon Islands and Swaziland.

[4] From the period 1989 to the end of the 1990s, the following states went on to recognize and to establish diplomatic relations with Taiwan: Burkina Faso (1994 – still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan), Central African Republic (1991- went to recognize China in 1998), and Chad (1997-2006), the Gambia ( 1995, still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan), Guinea-Bissau (1990 – 1998), Lesotho (1990-1994), Liberia (1989-1993; 1997-2003), Niger (1992-1996), São Tomé and Príncipe (1997 – still have diplomatic relations with Taiwan), Senegal (1996 – 2005). Note that all of these states were either from West Africa or Central Africa, a region marked by small and/or resourceless states. When it comes to East and Southern Africa, Taiwanese offensive diplomacy of luring states into its side was unsuccessful.

Presently, out of the 4 African states that recognizes Taiwan (Burkina Faso, Gambia, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Swaziland), only Swaziland recognition that was not gotten in the 1990s (data collected from PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs Department of African Affairs http://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjb/zzjg/fzs/default.htm and Taiwan Ministry of African Affairs http://www.mofa.gov.tw/webapp/ct.asp?xItem=72&ctNode=1019&mp=6) .

[5] The only exception being Cape Verde in the period of 1975-1980 (Goldsmith: 2001, 126).

[6] These include the Government office building, the National Library, the Statue of Cape Verde national hero, Amilcar Cabral, and the Cape Verde’s first dam.

[7] For the year of 2005 the trade relations between China and the two Lusophone African micro-states amounted (in US dollars) to the following: $5,190,000 (Cape Verde), $5,790,000 (Guinea-Bissau). Moreover, trade statistics consulted indicate that China is not among the five biggest trade partners in those two Lusophone states.