The Government of Honduras made official this Saturday the rupture of the relations it had with Taiwan since 1941 and assured that it will not have any official ties with Taipei again eleven days after the country’s president, Xiomara Castro, announced her intention to establish ties with China.
The Honduran Foreign Minister, Eduardo Enrique Reina, reported in a statement that the government “has communicated to Taiwan the decision to break diplomatic relations between the two.”
The announcement comes eleven days after the Honduran president ordered her foreign minister to establish diplomatic relations with China to fulfill her Government Plan.
The Executive of Honduras indicated that it “recognizes the existence of only one China in the world, and that the Government of the People’s Republic of China is the only legitimate Government that represents all of China.”
The statement from the Honduran Foreign Ministry emphasizes that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory,” which is why it has communicated to Taipei “the rupture of diplomatic relations, pledging not to have any official relationship or contact again” with the island.
It was not on Castro’s agenda
Before her inauguration as president of Honduras, on January 27, 2022, Xiomara Castro had said that it was not on her agenda to open relations with China.
The Honduran foreign minister traveled to China last Wednesday to continue managing the opening of relations with the Asian giant, which led to the withdrawal of the Taiwanese ambassador in Tegucigalpa, Vivia Chang.
A day later, the Taiwan Foreign Ministry expressed its “deep dissatisfaction” with Reina’s trip, which “seriously hurts the feelings of the Taiwanese people,” the Taiwanese news agency CNA reported.
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu declared Thursday that Honduras “asked a high price” for maintaining diplomatic ties with Taipei, which was confirmed the same day by Honduran Vice Foreign Minister Tony Garcia.
The Honduran official indicated that his country asked Taiwan for 2 billion dollars to restructure its foreign debt and, according to unofficial versions, also requested a hospital.
“A responsible country” seeks to restructure its public debt, for which reason Honduras thought that “Taiwan could do it with its reserves, unfortunately they could not,” García stressed.
Honduras and Taiwan maintained a relationship of military, educational, and economic cooperation, and the island financed technical and agricultural aid projects and also hosted hundreds of Honduran scholarship holders at its universities.
The rupture of relations with Taiwan by Honduras reduces to 13 the number of countries with which Taipei maintains official diplomatic relations and makes the Central American nation the ninth country -and the fifth Latin American- that since 2016 cuts with the island to establish ties with Chinese.
Honduras joined its neighbors Panama, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua, which in recent years have broken relations with the island in favor of the People’s Republic of China, a decision that keeps Hondurans divided.