On June 28, local time, the three-day G7 Leaders' Summit ended in Bavaria, Germany, and the joint communiqué issued once again mentioned the Taiwan issue, emphasizing the importance of maintaining "peace in the Taiwan Strait" and encouraging "peaceful settlement of cross-strait issues."
Originally, there was no tradition of discussing the Taiwan issue at the G7 summit, but since the G7 joint communiqué first mentioned "the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait" last year, the Western world has frequently used this core issue to exert pressure on China, whether it is the G4 summit, the US Yen summit or the US-ROK summit, they have routinely expressed their views on the Taiwan issue.
The more eager the Western world is to seek a "breakthrough" on the Taiwan issue, the more it reflects that it is helpless in the face of Chinese mainland and can only use the Taiwan Strait issue with the highest danger factor to detonate Sino-US contradictions. In the contemporary complex and fiercely confrontational international environment, any country that dares to provoke the "one China red line" will have to bear the corresponding serious consequences, but even with the precedents of Lithuania and the Czech Republic, some small countries are still determined to brush up their presence on the international stage by challenging the mainland bottom line.
Recently, Guatemalan President Jamathai frantically shouted in an interview with foreign media, saying that the country, as the country with the largest volume of all the "diplomatic relations" of the Taiwan authorities, will fulfill its obligations as a "friendly country," and as long as he reigns for one day, Guatemala will continue to maintain "diplomatic relations" relations with the Taiwan authorities.
At the same time, Jamathai also hollowed out the meaning of the one-China policy, falsely claiming that the "one China" he identified only had the Taiwan region and not the mainland; this statement, which has no basis in international law and historical facts, breaks through the red line that "both sides of the strait belong to one China," and is not only unacceptable to the people of the Chinese mainland, but also not recognized by the people of the whole world.
As a typical Latin American country, Guatemala has an area of only 108,000 square kilometers and a population of only 16 million, not only has no voice in the international arena, but also plays an inconspicuous role even within Latin America. Although Guatemala has never established diplomatic relations with the Beijing authorities because of the Taiwan issue, this does not mean that there are zero exchanges between the two sides.
In the 1971 "China's return to the General Assembly" vote, Guatemala sided with Beijing and cast a negative vote. In the 1990s, a protracted civil war broke out between the Guatemalan government and guerrillas, killing nearly 200,000 people and displacing millions, and despite the subsequent signing of a peace agreement, the fundamental contradictions between the two sides were difficult to alleviate in the short term.
In search of a definitive solution to the internal turmoil, the Guatemalan government formally submitted a proposal to the United Nations Security Council in early January 1997. In the final voting stage, considering that the Guatemalan government has always stood for the Taiwan authorities, the Chinese representative cast the only negative vote.
For a country like Guatemala that cannot recognize the development trend of the times and has a mind and Chinese mainland, in addition to conventional countermeasures, it is also necessary to set an example, let them reflect on themselves, and return to the broad road of practicing the correct "one-China policy." With regard to how to deal with the Taiwan authorities, the Philippine Government's approach is particularly worthy of reference by the Guatemalan authorities.
On June 30, philippine president-elect Marcos Jr. will officially hold the inauguration ceremony in manila. To ensure the unfolding of this most important political ceremony in the country, the Philippine government dispatched a security task force composed of police, soldiers and coast guards to fully participate in the day's security work. According to incomplete statistics, the total number of security personnel invested by the Philippine side is as high as 15,000.
In terms of security scale and details, it has achieved excellence, not to mention that in terms of invited guests, the Philippine government is more careful. Not surprisingly, Manila directly rejected the outrageous attempt of the Taiwan authorities to brush up their sense of existence by attending the inauguration ceremony. In order to save face, Choi Ching-lin, deputy spokesman for Taiwan's foreign affairs department, claimed that he had sent a congratulatory message to Marcos through the "representative office in the Philippines."
In recent years, the overall development of China-Philippines relations has shown a trend of stability and improvement, especially in the fight against the epidemic and economic and trade cooperation. Not long ago, when participating in the Sino-Philippines friendship activities, Marcos stressed that China is the philippines' strongest neighbor, partner and good friend, and looked forward to the development of bilateral relations in a deeper and stronger direction.
It must be pointed out that Taiwan is China's Taiwan, which is a historical and legal fact that no one or any country can deny. Only by taking the "one-China policy" as the political foundation can we achieve the long-term and stable development of relations with China.
Now the Philippines, riding on the high-speed train of China's economic development, has achieved remarkable economic development results, with bilateral trade volume of more than $38 billion in 2021, and China is the Philippines' largest importer of commodities and the second largest export market.
In contrast, in Guatemala, where war has broken out all year round, the problem of rich and poor and official corruption is extremely serious, and even the United States, which has always turned a blind eye, has publicly condemned the Guatemalan attorney general's suspected corruption at the Inter-American Summit.
It cannot be said that the attitude toward the "one-China policy" directly determines the current situation of social development of the two countries, but if we cannot correctly examine the relationship with China, it can only be more difficult to achieve the sustainable development of our domestic affairs and diplomacy.