Taiwan ally warns of pivot to China in quest for Covid vaccines

One of Taiwan’s few remaining allies has warned it may be forced to switch diplomatic allegiance from Taipei to Beijing to gain access to Chinese coronavirus vaccines.

Carlos Alberto Madero, Honduras’s chief cabinet co-ordinator who is akin to a prime minister, told the Financial Times in an interview that the country wanted to avoid breaking longstanding ties with Taipei. But he warned that access to vaccines was “much more urgent than anything else”.

The central American nation has been unable to buy adequate stocks of Covid-19 jabs and has suffered delays in deliveries on signed contracts. It has inoculated fewer than 1 per cent of its 9m people.

“This puts us in a very difficult situation,” Madero said. “[The] Honduran people start to see that China is helping its allies and we start to ask ourselves why ours are not helping us.”

It could “definitely lead to changes in foreign policy”.

We think geopolitics plays a role with the vaccines. You start to see that the countries which have more relations with China have more access to vaccines

Madero said Honduras had approached the US for vaccines and been promised help but had yet to receive any.

The US state department said Washington was “deeply concerned” about the challenges faced by Honduras and noted that President Joe Biden had announced 80m doses of vaccines would be given away globally by the end of June. A spokesperson did not say if Honduras would get any.

Just 15 countries have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which China claims as part of its territory. Any move by Honduras to drop Taiwan would spark alarm in Washington.

Over the past five years, China has used its economic power to persuade a third of Taiwan’s allies, including Panama in 2017 and El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018, into switching diplomatic recognition.

The US recently ramped up its diplomatic engagement with Paraguay after Asunción said China had offered to supply Covid-19 vaccines in exchange for switching recognition to Beijing. Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, called the president of Paraguay, in a move an American official said was aimed at providing public support for Taiwan’s allies.

The US, which has traditionally had strong influence in the region, has openly discouraged Taiwan’s remaining Latin American allies from switching. After El Salvador cut ties with Taipei in 2018, Washington said it would re-evaluate its relationship with San Salvador.

Members of the “Quad”, a security and diplomatic grouping between the US, Japan, India and Australia, agreed in March to create a plan to provide developing countries with jabs to counter China’s vaccine diplomacy. But some lawmakers want the Biden team to increase its focus on their southern neighbours.

Bob Menendez, Democratic chair of the Senate foreign relations committee, and Marco Rubio, a Republican senator, have urged the president to provide vaccines to Latin America and the Caribbean, citing the need to counter similar moves from China.

“Without US engagement and leadership, our competitors will continue efforts to use their less effective vaccines as leverage to coerce Latin America and Caribbean nations in support of a diplomatic agenda inimical to ours,” the senators said in a letter last week.

China has shipped more than half of the 144m doses of vaccines delivered to Latin America’s 10 most populous countries, according to an FT analysis.

El Salvador’s access to Chinese vaccines has helped it inoculate nearly 16 per cent of its population.

Honduras has tried to buy Chinese vaccines but has not been able to secure a contract.

“We think that geopolitics plays a role with the vaccines,” Madero said. “Of course, you start to see that the countries which have more relations with China have more access to vaccines.”

Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras, has raised the possibility of opening a trade office in China to try to improve relations.

Taipei is scrambling to secure vaccines for its own people amid the first big outbreak of Covid-19.

Taiwan’s foreign ministry has accused China of “using vaccines to exchange political and diplomatic benefits for countries that are in urgent need”, which it described as “a shameful act”.

Additional reporting by Katrina Manson in Washington