Pacific Islands Forum scraps Taiwan refrence from its communique after opposition from 'furious' China

The Pacific Islands Forum (Pif) summit ended in major drama after China demanded scrapping the reference to Taiwan from the forum’s joint communique. After the joint declaration was released China’s regional envoy said that the language about Taiwan was “unacceptable”. Amid the criticism, the body took the communique down and later republished it without the “offending paragraph”.

The summit brought together delegations from Australia, New Zealand and 16 Pacific island countries or territories. Out of these nations, only three of them still have diplomatic ties with Taiwan. It is pertinent to note that while China is not a member of the regional body, it still attended the meet as a “dialogue partner”, just like the United States.

Meanwhile, for over 30 years, Taiwan has been accorded the lesser status of “development partner,” something which irked Beijing, which claims sovereignty over the self-governing island.

What was the issue?

China and the Solomon Islands, which have fostered increasingly warm ties with Beijing since switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan in 2019, condemned the island region’s status in the body by its own name. However, the final communique published on the Pif website on Friday rebuffed any push for change in the status quo.

“Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China,” it said. Following this, China’s special envoy for the Pacific, Qian Bo, called for changes to the communique. According to Nikkei Asia, “visibly angry” Qian confronted the Pif secretary general, Baron Waqa after closing a news conference and called the statement “unacceptable”.

The Chinese envoy eventually told local reporters that the reference to Taiwan was “a surprising mistake made by someone” and it “must be corrected”. Qian made it clear that China should be seen as the representative “on behalf of the whole of China, including Taiwan and the mainland”, Nikkei Asia reported.

By Friday evening, the joint declaration was taken down from the Pif’s website. It was later published on Saturday morning with paragraph 66 about Taiwan no longer included. Instead of this, the paragraph of Solomon Island being the host of the next year’s Pif was moved up to become the new paragraph 66.

While the US and Australia also took part in the summit, the overall change in the joint declaration reflected the amount of influence China has over the Pacific region.

Meanwhile, Taiwan’s deputy Foreign Minister Tien Chung-kwang also travelled to Tonga, where the summit was held. However, he only held talks with Taiwan’s three remaining Pacific allies, Palau, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands.

After Tien arrived in Tonga, China’s foreign ministry released a statement in which they maintained that his visit would be watched closely. “Any attempt by the Taiwan authorities to brush up their sense of presence by rubbing shoulders with the forum can only be self-deceptive,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday.

With inputs from agencies.