Guyana abruptly terminated the agreement with Taiwan to open an office in the South American country, hours after China urged Georgetown to correct ‘their mistake’.
Earlier on Thursday, Taiwan’s foreign ministry announced that it had signed an agreement with Guyana to open an office in Taiwan – a de facto embassy for the island, which China claims is its sovereign territory without the right to diplomatic ties.
But later that day, the Foreign Ministry in Guyana said that the agreement was reversed – and that it still complied with the “One China” policy.
“The government has not entered into any diplomatic ties or relations with Taiwan and as a result of the incorrect communication of the signed agreement, this agreement has since been terminated,” the statement from Guyana read.
Guyana has traditionally had close ties with China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin responded to the move by saying Beijing hopes Guyana will not have official ties with Taiwan, and calls on the country to “take serious steps to correct error “.
The United States is concerned about the deepening of Chinese influence in Latin America. Guyana, a former British colony, recently began developing foreign oil reserves and is strategically located next to the disputed Venezuela, a key Chinese ally with which Guyana has a territorial dispute.
Taiwan has only formal diplomatic relations with 14 countries, including four Caribbean countries.
This list has gradually declined over the years as Beijing presses on smaller countries to switch from marriage. In 2018, the Dominican Republic announced that it would cut ties with Taipei, in a move that blamed the Taiwanese government for ‘dollar diplomacy’.
China’s CNOOC Ltd is part of a consortium with US oil companies Exxon Mobil Corp and Hess Corp. that has discovered more than 8 billion barrels of recoverable crude reserves in the Stabroek block off the coast of Guyana, which the country in a new energy hotspot has changed.