Taiwan’s president prepared to set off on a mission on Saturday to shore up relations with some of his island democracy’s shrinking band of diplomatic allies: three tiny Pacific Island nations that have taken an outsize importance in Taiwan’s struggle against Chinese efforts to push it off the international stage.
Lai Ching-te, the Taiwanese president, is scheduled to visit the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau, which amount to one-quarter of the dozen states that maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Since the 1970s, dozens of countries have shifted ties to China. Beijing claims the self-governed island of Taiwan as its territory, and insists that governments end diplomatic relations with Taipei if they want full relations with China.
Mr. Lai’s weeklong trip comes as his government tries to fathom what changes President-elect Donald J. Trump will bring to U.S. dealings with Taiwan, and with China. Mr. Trump has called for Taiwan to sharply increase its military spending and has complained about Taiwan’s global dominance in making semiconductors. But Mr. Trump’s proposed cabinet includes Republicans who have been deeply distrustful of China and sympathetic to Taiwan.
In uncertain times, experts say, Taiwan needs every edge of international advantage that it can get, including from its small allies in the Pacific. Their total population is about 67,000, according to United Nations estimates, compared with Taiwan’s more than 23 million people. But they are members of the United Nations and its bodies, while Taiwan is generally excluded.
“The advantage that Taiwan gets from showing good will to these diplomatic partners is that naturally they help us speak out internationally, in all kinds of international settings where Taiwan can’t do it,” said Ian Tsung-yen Chen, a professor who specializes in Asia-Pacific relations at National Sun Yat-sen University in Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan.
In addition to visiting the Pacific Island countries, Mr. Lai will spend two nights in Hawaii and stop for a day on Guam, an American island territory in the Pacific, Taiwanese officials have said. His trip has already drawn condemnation from Beijing. In the coming days, China may, if precedent is a guide, display its anger over Mr. Lai’s trip by piling invective on him, and Taiwanese security officials have said they expect Beijing to also stage increased military activities around the island, including coast guard maneuvers.
China says that Taiwanese leaders’ stopovers on American soil violate Washington diplomatic understandings with Beijing; U.S. officials say the transit visits are a courtesy for Taiwan’s leaders. Taiwanese leaders have used their brief stops to promote stronger ties with the United States, which, even without full diplomatic relations, remains their most important partner — a vital market for Taiwan’s goods and a supplier of most of its military weapons.
This time, Mr. Lai will not set foot in the continental United States, reducing opportunities for high-profile meetings. Beijing’s reaction may also be relatively muted as Chinese leaders focus on preparing for the second Trump administration. More attention may fall on Mr. Lai’s efforts to preserve Taiwan’s diplomatic footprint, especially in the Pacific.
Mr. Lai is likely to be especially eager to make sure that the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau speak up for Taiwan in the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s main diplomatic gathering, said Mihai Sora, the director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank in Sydney. The Forum is one of the few multilateral venues where Taiwan has a steady presence — as a “development partner” — to the consternation of diplomats from China, which also has a role in the dialogue.
When leaders met for the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga this year, a Chinese official denounced a draft communiqué that confirmed Taiwan’s status, the Guardian reported. But the Solomon Islands, which has had strong ties with China, may try to diminish Taiwan’s role when it hosts the leaders meeting next year. Taiwan’s diplomatic partners could help counter that risk.
“Our country is closely tracking developments regarding the Solomon Islands and other countries that follow China’s lead and who may try to exploit opportunities to thwart our participation in the Pacific Islands Forum in 2025,” Jeff Liu, a spokesman for Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a written response to questions. Taiwan, Mr. Liu wrote, would “work closely” with its diplomatic allies and partners “to firmly defend our rights and interests in participating” in the forum.
Over the past decade, China has used generous offers of aid and investment to draw away Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners, partly in an effort to stifle Taiwan’s global standing and also as retaliation against successive governments led by the Democratic Progressive Party. The party rejects the idea that Taiwan is a part of China and says the island is, for practical purposes, independent and should stay that way.
Days after Mr. Lai won Taiwan’s presidential election in January, China announced that it had persuaded Nauru, a speck in the Pacific Ocean, to shift diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing. In 2019, two Pacific Island states — Kiribati and the Solomon Islands — switched to Beijing. This week, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, hosted Fiame Naomi Mata’afa, the prime minister of Samoa, in Beijing, presenting China as a firm friend to the Pacific Island nations.
People on the Pacific Islands, threatened by rising seas caused by global warming, have learned to cope with geopolitical rivalries spilling into their region, said Sione Tekiteki, a former official at the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat who now lectures at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand.
“The problem, I would say, is the fact that, rather than trying to deal with the issues themselves, they work through their affiliated Pacific nations, which in turns creates tensions among those Pacific nations,” Mr. Tekiteki said of China and Taiwan. “It’s only a big issue for us because everyone else talks about it and pulls in Pacific nations.”
The Lowy Institute’s latest annual survey of aid received by the Pacific Island countries combined estimated that in 2022 — the most recent year when the data is available — Taiwan dropped out of the top 10 bilateral aid donors to the region. The drop appeared to reflect how, when Taiwan’s diplomatic partners in the Pacific switch to Beijing, they no longer take Taiwanese aid. China was the second-biggest donor, some distance behind Australia.
Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies in the Pacific all have strong ties with the United States or Australia, and that may discourage them from shifting ties to Beijing, Mr. Sora of the Lowy Institute said. The Marshall Islands and Palau receive U.S. economic support and other benefits through what are called “Compacts of Free Association,” and Tuvalu last year signed a wide-ranging agreement with Australia.
“It’s an important element in terms of adding ballast to these three countries’ current diplomatic ties with Taiwan,” Mr. Sora said. “Those countries might not feel pressed or compelled to look for new diplomatic partnerships.”
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