China Wins New Friend in Pacific in Blow to US Interests

Pacific Island Nauru's decision to switch diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing this week will have come as a blow to the United States amid its stop-start engagement in the region, where China's overtures have proven particularly enticing in recent years.

In a national address on Monday, President David Adeang said his country would reestablish ties with the People's Republic of China, a move that he said was in the best interests of the nation.

It came shortly after Taiwan's Vice President Lai Ching-te—a China skeptic with the governing Democratic Progressive Party—won the island's presidential election on January 13, giving the DPP control of the executive for an unprecedented third term .

The U.S. and China are involved in a tussle for influence in the South Pacific as part of their wider geopolitical rivalry. As America neglected its old stomping ground to prioritize other areas of the world, Beijing swept in with promises to fund social programs and to help the front-line island states combat the climate crisis.

Under the surface, there is also an understated security element to the contest. The Pacific Islands know that Washington and Beijing both seek access to critical ports and military bases in the region, and some are only too happy to play the superpowers off against each other.

The Presidential Office in Taipei said it regretted Nauru's choice to cut ties "under the inducement of Beijing." Only 12 countries in the world, 11 of which are U.N. member states, recognize Taiwan's Republic of China government.

In 2019, when Beijing poached the Solomon Islands from Taiwan's shrinking list of formal diplomatic partners, President Tsai Ing-wen said her government would "not engage in dollar diplomacy with China in order to satisfy unreasonable demands."

Nauru did not provide a detailed reason for its switch of allegiance to Beijing—a move it tried in 2002 and walked back three years later. Adeang's office did not immediately respond to Newsweek 's written request for comment.

During a visit to Taiwan on Tuesday, Laura Rosenberger, chair of the American Institute in Taiwan—the de facto U.S. embassy on the island—described Nauru's decision as "disappointing."

" Taiwan is a reliable, like-minded and democratic partner. We encourage all countries to increase engagement with Taiwan and continue to support democracy, good governance, transparency and adherence to the rule of law," Rosenberger said.

The U.S., like most countries in the world, has no formal relations with Taiwan, but the island's declining official recognition undermines the government's legitimacy and is a potential point of political instability .

The U.S. published its first-ever Pacific strategy in 2022, in which it accused China of diplomatic pressure and economic coercion in the region. Beijing's representatives in Washington described the charge as "nonsense."

Today, America is caught between several competing strategic priorities, many of which the White House sees as directly or indirectly linked to its ability to effectively counter China's systemic challenge to the postwar international order.

U.S. President Joe Biden has twice hosted Pacific Island leaders in Washington and pledged hundreds of millions of dollars in funds to the region over the next decade. Subject matter experts lamented the late cancelation of what was to be a historic visit to Papua New Guinea last May in order for Biden to hold debt ceiling talks with the Republican leadership.

"China is pushing hard on the 'inevitability' narrative with other countries that recognize Taiwan, saying it is inevitable that China will win out, so it's better to cut a deal while they can," Cleo Paskal, a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington, D.C., think tank, told Newsweek .

"In the two Pacific Island countries that recognize Taiwan and are in Free Association with the U.S. (Palau and the Marshall Islands), they add the message that 'you can't count on the U.S. either,'" Paskal said.

Kwei-Bo Huang, a professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, told Newsweek : "There was a domino effect once the Solomon Islands and Kiribati switched recognition from the Republic of China to the People's Republic in 2019."

"Since then, Beijing's influence on the Pacific island countries has obviously increased, indicating a failure of the Tsai Ing-wen administration to stop Beijing's aggressive foreign policy behavior toward the diplomatic 'tug-of-war,'" Huang said.

Courtney Fung, a scholar-in-residence at the Asia Society Australia research institute, said Beijing was following an existing playbook against Taiwan.

"The recent record indicates China pushing for states to switch diplomatic recognition during DPP administrations, so this isn't a new tactic for Beijing, but the timing right after Taiwan's elections sends a message about China's diplomatic reach," Fung told Newsweek .

In its announcement this week, Nauru cited U.N. Resolution 2758, which was adopted by the General Assembly in 1971 to recognize the People's Republic of China as "the only legitimate representative of China to the United Nations ."

Beijing claims Taiwan as part of Chinese territory, although the Communist Party has never ruled there. The U.N. text does not mention Taiwan or the Republic of China.

"The purposeful emphasis on U.N. Resolution 2758 is odd because this resolution is aimed at solving the ' China seat ' dispute within the U.N. and has nothing to do with the question of which country, the ROC or the PRC' Taiwan belongs to outside the U.N. system," said Huang, the political scientist.

Rosenberger, the AIT chair, said the resolution "did not make a determination on the status of Taiwan" and "does not preclude countries from having diplomatic relationships with Taiwan."

Beijing has used the resolution to its advantage in order to push back against U.S. efforts to dilute its insistence on the one China principle, under which Taiwan is unequivocally part of China, according to Fung of the Asia Society.

"However, Nauru's reference to U.N. Resolution 2758 is a new justification for switching diplomatic recognition and is indicative of China projecting its revisionist interpretation of the resolution into international politics," Fung said.

China's Foreign Ministry welcomed Naura's announcement. "China stands ready to work with Nauru to open new chapters of our bilateral relations on the basis of the one-China principle," it said.

Officials in Beijing had described last weekend's elections in Taiwan as a choice between peace and war, and Lai's victory by a plurality of 40 percent would have frustrated China's President Xi Jinping .

Huang said Taipei's three remaining diplomatic partners in the Pacific are yet to signal they are ready to switch sides. "The Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu haven't shown an evident attitude toward a 'change of heart' from Taipei to Beijing either due to the Washington's stronger influence or due to their balancing act."

"The Marshall Islands and Palau belong to the Washington-led Compacts of Free Association," he said. "Tuvalu seems to butter its bread on both sides, plus it receives continuous economic aid from Taipei."