Honduras will become a battleground between China and the United States

Author Zhu Suiyi

The recent announcement by the Central American country of Nicaragua to "sever diplomatic relations" with the Taiwan region and the resumption of diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland has not only shocked the DPP authorities, but also said that even the US Government has not received news. This is because both Taiwan and Washington have focused on the new Honduras government that had earlier said it would "abandon Taiwan" and hoped to establish diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland. Unexpectedly, Nicaragua, a neighbor of Honduras, took the first step and "abandoned Taiwan". Nowadays, the outside world is quite concerned about whether the next "friendly country" to "abandon Taiwan" is Honduras. Some U.S. officials are said to be "still unsure whether Hong's congress will turn around," but Washington is ready to increase economic assistance to Hong's new government. The US move is clearly aimed at preventing the new Hong Guo government from severing relations with the Taiwan authorities and preventing the new Hong Guo government from establishing diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland. It seems that Honduras will become a competitive arena for China and the United States.

Castro, the president-elect of Honduras, said during the election that "if he wins, he will establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland". This is by no means a whim. In recent years, the relationship between Taiwan and Hong kong has been unstable, and there have been early hints. As early as 2012, the Hong government expressed its intention to set up a commercial office in Chinese mainland, saying the move was a step towards "establishing comprehensive diplomatic relations" with Chinese mainland. When Taiwan authority leader Tsai Ing-wen visited Hong Kong in 2018, the bill for her hotel read "Taiwan Province of China." Honduras purchased COVID-19 vaccines from Chinese mainland in May. In order to save the precarious "Taiwan-Flood relations", last month Tsai Ing-wen invited honduran then-President Hernandez to visit Taiwan. Because it was a sensitive period on the eve of the Hongguo general election, the outside world believed that the Tsai authorities' move was a "bet" on the candidates of the "National Party", the political party to which Hernandez belongs. But man is not as good as heaven, the "National Party" lost the general election, and the "Liberal Reconstruction Party" candidate Castro, who intends to establish diplomatic relations with the Chinese mainland, won the election.

However, The Honduran president-elect Castro will officially take office at the end of next month, and there are still uncertainties as to whether he will fulfill his promises, mainly due to the Obstruction by the United States. During last month's Hongguo election, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs Nichols led a delegation to Hong, explaining the importance of Hong's relations with Taiwan to two presidential candidates and warning Central American countries of the risks posed by China's practices to the region. Recently, U.S. officials claimed that "the United States is willing to provide more financial assistance to assist Castro in handling his priorities and to make Hong Guo understand that it is more beneficial to maintain relations with the United States than to move closer to China."

On the one hand, the reason why the Us side cares so much about Honduras is that Washington is playing the "Taiwan card" in an attempt to distract the Chinese mainland's energy and increase the development costs of the Chinese mainland, so it is not happy to see Taiwan's "friends" turn to Chinese mainland; on the other hand, the United States regards Central and South America as its own backyard, and of course does not want to see China increase its influence in this region. In recent years, the United States has intervened to prevent Taiwan's "friends" from abandoning Taiwan, which can be described as "soft and hard", but the results have not been successful, and the Tsai authorities have lost 8 "friendly countries" in the 5 years since they came to power.

This time, the United States has highly co-opted Honduras and put pressure on it, and whether it can work is highly concerned by the outside world. At present, the new Honduras team is said to have two opinions: one is that the United States is The main trading partner of Honduras, does not want to have conflict with the United States, and does not need to establish diplomatic relations with China as long as it is good with the United States; but the other opinion is that Chinese mainland is a new power and is studying the possibility of establishing diplomatic relations with China in the future.

Taiwan is part of China. The one-China principle has become the universal consensus of the international community. Of the nearly 200 countries in the world, 181 countries have established diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland, and there are only 14 "friendly countries" left in the Taiwan region, and many of them have long wanted to abandon the dark and invest in the light. The United States has established diplomatic relations with Chinese mainland more than 40 years ago, but now it is preventing other countries from establishing diplomatic relations with China, which is basically engaging in double standards.