On Nov. 30, Taiwan’s president Lai Ching-te embarked on a week-long visit to Taiwan's three Pacific diplomatic allies: the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Palau. During the trip, Lai made a transit stop in Hawaii on the way to Marshall Islands and another transit stop in Guam between visits to Tuvalu and Palau.
Because China currently claims Taiwan as part of its sovereign territory, Taiwan occupies a contested diplomatic position. It struggles to achieve international acceptance as an independent nation beyond the recognition provided by its official diplomatic allies, which now number only 12.
Consequently, a tradition in Taiwan's diplomatic outreach is for Taiwan’s president to visit as many of Taiwan's official diplomatic allies as possible during their term while transiting through non-recognizing countries (like the U.S.) along the way to strengthen ties with them and defy China.
This strategy has sometimes been called "transit diplomacy," and it has often been used in Taiwan’s engagement with its Pacific diplomatic allies because Hawaii and Guam — both locations in the Pacific controlled by the United States — can be leveraged as convenient transit points when Taiwan visits its Pacific partners.
Diplomatic visits to the Pacific and transit diplomacy are something Lai’s predecessors Chen Shui-bian, Ma Ying-jeou, and Tsai Ing-wen have all engaged in with varying levels of success.
In 2005, when then President Chen Shui-bian visited three of Taiwan’s Pacific allies at the time, that is, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati, he also made a surprise stopover in Fiji, which did not have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. This was held up by Chen as evidence of widespread international support for Taiwan.
In 2017, then President Tsai Ing-wen stopped in Hawaii on her way to three of Taiwan’s Pacific allies at the time — the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu and Solomon Islands — in a move described as “[a] transit that is more like a visit.”
Yet, there is an inherent tension in Taiwan’s presidential visits to Pacific allies as they frequently seem to place more emphasis on the transits than on the visits to actual allies.
Visits to the Pacific have sometimes highlighted ethnocentric views about Taiwan's Pacific allies or generated disappointment among citizens in allied countries at rushed preparations and short stays (Lai spent only several hours in Tuvalu in 2024). This tends to suggest Taiwan is often more interested in making splashy layovers in non-recognizing countries that will inevitably anger China than in actually reinforcing ties with its Pacific partners.
Lai's trip, which carried the theme “Smart and Sustainable Development for a Prosperous Austronesian Region,” even more clearly highlighted the conflicting aims of Taiwan’s presidential visits to the Pacific.
The word Austronesian in the title of Lai’s visit refers to the fact that the Indigenous peoples of Taiwan and the peoples of most Pacific countries are part of the Austronesian language group, and share linguistic connections.
Although the majority of Taiwan’s population is not Indigenous but rather Han Chinese, Taiwan uses this linguistic connection as part of its Austronesian diplomacy to foster closer ties between Taiwan, its Pacific allies and non-allied Pacific places. Hence, the theme of Lai’s Pacific trip is meant to signal Taiwan's intimate and respectful relationships with countries in the Austronesian language group.
Lai echoed this idea throughout his trip, including in speeches in the Marshall Islands, Guam and Palau statements like “We share Austronesian culture, which makes us like family.”
Yet, while attempting to strengthen Austronesian ties, Lai was clearly also using his visit to signal Taiwan’s strong relationship with the U.S. by transiting through Hawai'i and Guam. Although the U.S. does not maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan, the fact that the president of Taiwan can stop in U.S.-controlled locales, meet with officials like the governors of Hawaii and Guam and receive U.S. reassurances of its support for Taiwan undermines the legitimacy of China’s claims to the archipelago.
In Guam, Lai conspicuously switched back and forth between referring to the territory as part of the “Austronesian” region and part of the “Indo-Pacific” region, a nod to the U.S.’s preferred terminology for the Pacific.
Overlooking struggles for Indigenous sovereignty in Taiwan, Guam, and Hawaii and attempting to distinguish Taiwan from China, Lai said, “[while] the three countries that the delegation visited and the two places where it made transit stops are all located in different time zones, they all have the same free air.”
This type of rhetoric not only serves to reinforce the assumption that the U.S.-controlled islands of Hawaii and Guam unarguably belong to the U.S. and are, consequently, “free” but also undermines any claims by the Taiwan government that it accords priority to interests of Austronesian partners.
Hawai‘i and Guam are both part of the Austronesian language group yet Taiwan’s presidential visits to Hawai'i and Guam draw the ire of China and further focus China’s attention on these two places as likely targets in competition between the U.S., China, and Taiwan.
Guam, which is heavily militarized by the U.S., is already a target for China given its proximity to that country. A Taiwanese presidential visit to Guam only threatens the safety of the Indigenous people there in an attempt to show the world that Taiwan is a friend of the U.S. despite China’s opposition.
China has already lodged protests with the U.S. about Lai’s visit to Hawaii and has also begun to take countermeasures by increasing military deployments around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s belief in its right to international recognition overlooks how its transit diplomacy increases military threats to the Pacific, which are already high enough, and supports the ongoing settler colonialism of the U.S. in the region.
If Taiwan’s transit diplomacy continues in this vein, this will clearly indicate that Taiwan’s motivations for visiting Pacific allies are more about deepening ties with the U.S. than with its “Austronesian” partners — in other words that Taiwan’s diplomatic goals have little to do with a prosperous Austronesian region and more with its own survival.
This article appeared first on Devpolicy Blog (devpolicy.org), from the Development Policy Centre at The Australian National University. Jess Marinaccio is an assistant professor of Asian Pacific Studies at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Marinaccio previously worked for Tuvalu’s Department of Foreign Affairs and was a member of the Secretariat for Tuvalu’s Constitutional Review Parliamentary Select Committee.
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