South Africa asks Taiwan to move office out of country’s capital

South Africa has told Taiwan to move its de facto embassy out of the country’s capital, in the latest indication of China’s growing influence in the Global South.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry said it had been ordered to relocate the embassy from Pretoria to Johannesburg by the end of the month.

South Africa and China strengthened relations when president Xi Jinping travelled to the African nation for the BRICS summit last August. Then when South African president Cyril Ramaphosa visited Beijing this year for the Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, he reiterated his country’s adherence to the One China principle.

The principle, a cornerstone of Beijing’s diplomatic relations, affirms that there is only one sovereign country named China and that Taiwan is a part of it. Any country that accepts the principle cannot have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

Four months after Mr Xi’s visit, South Africa first asked Taiwan to move out its embassy, a Taiwanese official told Bloomberg. They claimed Chinese diplomats had been pressuring South Africa to get Taipei to move the embassy.

Taiwan’s foreign minister Lim Chia-lung was working on countermeasures for South Africa’s representative office in Taipei, CNA news agency reported. He could ask South Africa to relocate their office from Taipei and even impose stricter visa rules for South African travellers and suspend bilateral educational exchanges.

Taipei could instead give priority to the Kingdom of Eswatini, its only diplomatic ally in Africa, for the hiring of teachers.

open image in gallery

Taiwan has accused Beijing of using its growing economic heft to poach away its diplomatic allies, pressuring nations to sever or downgrade relations with Taipei in favour of China, which regards the island as its sovereign territory.

Taipei sees such moves as part of an aggressive strategy by China to undermine the island’s sovereignty and further diminish its presence on the global stage.

Taiwan has just 12 formal diplomatic allies after the Pacific island of Nauru recognised China earlier this year. Taipei has lost 10 diplomatic allies during the last eight years.

South Africa severed formal diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1998.

In 2017, Nigeria instructed Taiwan to relocate its mission out of the capital, cut its staff and remove “Republic of China” from its name, allegedly under pressure from Beijing. China subsequently hailed Nigeria for supporting the One China principle.

Taiwan responded by forcing Nigeria to move its representative office outside Taipei and summoned the African country’s acting trade director twice to express its concern that the move harmed Taiwan’s interests.

In a diplomatic boost, Taiwan opened its third office in India this week, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center in Mumbai. China lodged a diplomatic protest with India in response saying it “strongly opposes all forms of official contact and interaction between Taiwan and India”.