cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/58173863
After enjoying great success in eliminating Taiwan’s formal diplomatic ties, China has turned its attention to the island’s quasi-embassies, called representative offices. One reason is that persuading Taiwan’s last 12 diplomatic partners to switch recognition to Beijing is increasingly difficult.
[Op-ed by Thomas Yun-Zhe He is an assistant research fellow at the Association of Strategic Foresight in Taipei.]
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The shift in China’s diplomatic pressure began during the Taiwanese administration of President Lai Ching-te. In 2024, South Africa demanded that Taiwan relocate its representative office from Pretoria, and in July 2026, Papua New Guinea unilaterally announced the closure of Taiwan’s representative office. Compared with Taiwan’s previous administration, led by Tsai Ing-wen, these cases show a clear shift in the China’s diplomatic pressure.
China’s targeting of Taiwanese representative offices is hardly new. As early as 2017, Beijing pressured countries including Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Ecuador and Jordan to rename or relocate Taiwan’s representative offices. This has had much less success than the campaign to persuade Taiwan’s diplomatic partners to switch recognition to Beijing. Still, as Taiwan has concentrated its resources on maintaining ties with its remaining diplomatic partners – those with which it exchanges formal embassies – Beijing has had greater reason to weaken Taiwan’s the informal ones, the representative offices.
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Apart from Australia and New Zealand, Taiwan has only two representative offices in the region, in PNG and Fiji. Its diplomatic and trade engagement with Pacific Island countries has long relied heavily on these two offices, particularly the one in Fiji. In addition to handling diplomatic affairs with eight Pacific island countries that do not formally recognise Taiwan, the Fiji office also manages Taiwan’s engagement with the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat, underscoring its importance to Taiwan’s regional diplomacy.
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The main reason for the shift in China’s diplomatic pressure is the growing difficulty of persuading Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic partners to switch recognition. Beijing has therefore increasingly turned to targeting Taiwan’s representative offices to enforce its One China principle. For Taiwan, this will constrain international engagement, particularly in the South Pacific, where individual offices with regional responsibilities are likely to face growing pressure.