China on Saturday stepped up its pressure on Taiwan by urging Taipei’s sole remaining African ally, Eswatini, to align with Beijing, Burkina Faso re-established ties with Beijing.
Burkina Faso on Thursday announced that it was severing ties with Taiwan, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a similar announcement in Taipei.
It was the second nation in a month to abandon Taipei, following the Dominican Republic, and the fourth since President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) took office.
Speaking to reporters in Beijing after signing an agreement to re-establish relations with Burkina Faso, Chinese State Councilor Wang Yi (王毅) said only one African state had yet to come over to China.
“We sincerely hope that this country will join the family of China-Africa friendship at an early date,” Wang said, with Burkinabe Foreign Minister Alpha Barry at his side.
He was confident that all of Africa would stand by China’s side “in the historic cause of China’s full national reunification,” he said.
Taiwan has accused China of using dollar diplomacy to lure away its allies, promising generous aid packages, charges China has denied. Some nations have switched back and forth between Beijing and Taipei several times.
This is the second time Burkina has cut ties with Taiwan. It did so in 1973, before resuming relations with Taipei in 1994.
Barry said a delegation of Chinese experts would visit his nation in the coming days to assess its needs for development assistance, hopefully in time for an agreement by September when Burkinabe President Roch Marc Kabore would be in Beijing for a summit of Chinese and African leaders.
“Burkina Faso intends to fully benefit from the strength and expertise of this country, seeking its support on many social and economic development projects in our own country,” Barry said.
China is Africa’s largest trade partner, with massive investments in mining, construction and banking, though it has been less active to date in Burkina Faso.
UNITED: The premier said Trump’s tariff comments provided a great opportunity for the private and public sectors to come together to maintain the nation’s chip advantage The government is considering ways to assist the nation’s semiconductor industry or hosting collaborative projects with the private sector after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose a 100 percent tariff on chips exported to the US, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) said yesterday. Trump on Monday told Republican members of the US Congress about plans to impose sweeping tariffs on semiconductors, steel, aluminum, copper and pharmaceuticals “in the very near future.” “It’s time for the United States to return to the system that made us richer and more powerful than ever before,” Trump said at the Republican Issues Conference in Miami, Florida. “They
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
TAIWAN DEFENSE: The initiative would involve integrating various systems in a fast-paced manner through the use of common software to obstruct a Chinese invasion The first tranche of the US Navy’s “Replicator” initiative aimed at obstructing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be ready by August, a US Naval Institute (USNI) News report on Tuesday said. The initiative is part of a larger defense strategy for Taiwan, and would involve launching thousands of uncrewed submarines, surface vessels and aerial vehicles around Taiwan to buy the nation and its partners time to assemble a response. The plan was first made public by the Washington Post in June last year, when it cited comments by US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue
MARITIME SECURITY: Of the 52 vessels, 15 were rated a ‘threat’ for various reasons, including the amount of time they spent loitering near subsea cables, the CGA said Taiwan has identified 52 “suspicious” Chinese-owned ships flying flags of convenience that require close monitoring if detected near the nation, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday, as the nation seeks to protect its subsea telecoms cables. The stricter regime comes after a Cameroon-flagged vessel was briefly detained by the CGA earlier this month on suspicion of damaging an international cable northeast of Taiwan. The vessel is owned by a Hong Kong-registered company with a Chinese address given for its only listed director, the CGA said previously. Taiwan fears China could sever its communication links as part of an attempt
RSS