Taiwan said it was "deeply saddened" after Nicaragua has become the latest country to sever international, diplomatic relations with Taipei in favor of Beijing amid the rising tension between China and the island nation.
Authorities of the small democratic nation said that Nicaragua had "disregarded [their] many years of friendship." On the other hand, China praised the Central American nation's decision and demanded that any country who wished to have diplomatic relations with Beijing must cut ties with Taiwan.
Nicaragua Cuts Diplomatic Ties With Taiwan
The news comes as the US State Department on Friday called for democracies worldwide to "expand engagement with Taiwan" in opposition to China's aggressive claims. Beijing has long since seen Taiwan as a breakaway province that it plans to unify with the mainland in the future.
However, Taipei sees itself as a democratically-governed, independent country although it has never formally declared independence from mainland China. Since President Tsai Ing-wen took office in May 2016 and ruled over Taiwan, the country's list of international allies has decreased from 21 to 14, BBC reported.
Nicaragua's decision is similar to those made by other Central American nations, such as Honduras and Guatemala. In a televised announcement on Thursday, Nicaragua's Foreign Minister Denis Moncada said that the People's Republic of China was the only legitimate government representing all of China while speaking from the capital city Managua. The official said that Taiwan was an "undoubted part of the Chinese territory."
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During his speech, Moncada announced that his nation was cutting diplomatic ties with Taiwan and stopped all contact or official relationship with the island nation. Since the end of the Chinese civil war more than 70 years ago, mainland China and Taiwan have had separate governing bodies.
Now, Taipei has become a flourishing multi-party democracy; but the ruling Chinese Communist Party has recently begun to consider the island as an inseparable part of its territory. However, Beijing's claims come as it has never once controlled the island nation.
Rising International Tensions
El Salvador, Burkina Faso, and the Dominican Republic all announced in 2018 that they were no longer recognizing Taipei as a separate nation from China. In 2019, the same decision was made by the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, CNN reported.
Taiwan's foreign ministry said that as a member of the international community Taiwan had the right to exchange and develop diplomatic relations with other nations worldwide. Taipei officials said the country would continue to promote "pragmatic diplomacy" in an attempt to expand its international space.
China has repeatedly claimed that Taiwan had no right to the trappings of a state, recently stepping up pressure to win the favor of Taipei's remaining international allies. China's ambassador at the United Nations, Zhang Jun, said that Beijing was highly commending Nicaragua's decision, arguing that the One-China principle was a widely accepted consensus within the international community.
The cutting of ties between Nicaragua and Taiwan is also a severe blow to the United States after the American federal government imposed sanctions on Nestor Moncada Lau, a national security adviser to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. United States authorities allege that Lau operated an import and customs fraud scheme in an attempt to give profits to Ortega's government, CNBC reported.
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