Looking ahead to President Lai's stops in the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, TaiwanPlus speaks to Graeme Smith, senior fellow at the Australian National University, about the nuanced nature of Taiwan's diplomatic relationships with these nations.
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00:00Palau, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands each have unique relationships with Taiwan.
00:05Can you talk a little bit about how Taiwan helps these countries, and then how these
00:09countries help Taiwan?
00:11These nations are very helpful to Taiwan in international fora.
00:16They speak for Taiwan in the United Nations and other bodies, and advocate for a widening
00:22of Taiwan's diplomatic space.
00:25What these countries get from Taiwan, and maybe why they've chosen to stay with Taiwan
00:29rather than China, is their microstates.
00:33They're quite small in terms of their infrastructure needs, so a more tailored and more nuanced
00:37approach in some ways better befits them.
00:41Taiwan has put a lot of effort into cultivating the political elites in these countries, and
00:46many of them have had their children go to a university and school in Taiwan, so they
00:52have this close personal relationship with Taiwan that they might not have in the context
00:59of a big country like China.
01:01That's not to say China hasn't tried to move these countries away from them, they most
01:04certainly have.
01:06Could you explain a little bit about how China in the past years has tried to attract these
01:10countries away from recognising Taiwan diplomatically?
01:14China operates in different ways in all the different countries.
01:17One of the more unusual strategies that's used both in Palau and in the Marshall Islands
01:23is it's tried to work through what might be called the grey zone, so people who are businessmen
01:29but also have criminal links, and the most prominent would be this guy called Broken
01:34Tooth Khoi who appeared in Palau and tried to set up a casino of all things, claiming
01:43that he had a casino license and that basically it was full steam ahead for investment in
01:49Palau from China.
01:51So this is an interesting thing they've tried.
01:53In Tuvalu they did last time around promise a big island building project because Tuvalu
01:59of course is one of these very low-lying atoll countries that is threatened by climate change
02:05and by most modelling will pretty well cease to exist by the end of the century.
02:11So they offered that, it was quite a big-ticket item, but Tuvalu decided to say no to that.
02:19Zooming out a bit, can you explain how the US-China competition is affecting these Pacific
02:25Island nations?
02:27In terms of US-China competition, which is a big topic, particularly in the northern
02:31Pacific, so this applies much more to Palau and the Marshall Islands than it does to Tuvalu
02:37which is a fairly remote part of the world.
02:40In the case of the northern Pacific, in the event of a conflict over Taiwan or the South
02:44China Sea, the US 7th Fleet would have to steam through the waters of Palau and the
02:50waters of the Marshall Islands.
02:51There's also a substantial US military presence in both Palau and the Marshall Islands.
02:58The Marshalls has the Ronald Reagan missile base which is home to some pretty serious
03:04hardware.
03:06So they are, in a way, have skin in the game just by dint of their geography, not by their
03:12choosing.