Paraguay’s Covid Crisis ‘Life and Death’ Gives China a Diplomatic Opening

RIO DE JANEIRO – Taiwan has built thousands of homes for the poor in Paraguay, upgraded the country’s healthcare system, awarded hundreds of scholarships and even helped fund the futuristic Congress building in the capital, and spent many decades nurturing their diplomatic ties.

But the alliance, which makes Paraguay one of only 15 countries with full diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and the only one in South America, faces an existential threat as Paraguay’s search for vaccines becomes increasingly desperate.

With its healthcare system growing as Covid-19 cases rise, Paraguayan officials on the political spectrum say it is time to consider dumping Taiwan, which does not export vaccines, to establish diplomatic ties with China , which does.

“It really is a life-and-death situation,” said Pepe Zhang, a co-director at the Atlantic Council, specializing in relations between Latin America and China. “In this very acute phase of the pandemic, less inventive countries like Paraguay are asking where they are going to get the vaccine.”

Mr. Zhang and a growing number of Paraguayans saw China as the most likely way to get the vaccines they needed – at least in the short term.

Western pharmaceutical companies prioritized shipments to affluent countries that posted early orders and left Latin America to rely primarily on Chinese vaccinations to quell an epidemic that had left a cruel toll.

This has given Beijing considerable leverage in a region where it has a wide constellation of investments and projects. Suddenly, the disruption of Paraguay from the Taiwan orbit – which Beijing’s goal of politically isolating an island it considers territory – seems within reach.

Euclides Acevedo, Paraguay’s foreign minister, recently said that Beijing had made it clear that it was interested in establishing ties with Paraguay. He embraced the prospect of making the diplomatic switch because he wanted to push Taiwan and its ally, the United States, to get vaccinations to Paraguay quickly.

“What does it help with a fraternal embrace that leaves us in a state of respiratory failure,” he said. Acevedo said in an interview on the television network Telefuturo late last month. “I think our strategic allies, including the United States and Taiwan, need to respond.”

Beijing’s one-China principle forces countries to choose between full diplomatic relations with Beijing or Taipei. Three Latin American countries have blinded and angered the United States government over the past few years by abruptly severing ties with Taiwan after secret negotiations with Beijing.

The conversion by the countries – Panama, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador – had promises of growing trade with Beijing and made them early recipients of Chinese vaccinations.

Mr. Acevedo said Paraguay should investigate what it would earn by doing the same.

“President Xi Jinping is very interested in working with us,” he said. “This is a political debate that needs to draw input from all parts of the state and society as a whole.”

Yet it is not clear that Paraguay has taken formal steps to investigate a flip.

Charles Andrew Tang, who heads the China-Paraguay Chamber of Commerce, said he had advised health ministry officials this year to complete the paperwork required to complete the purchase of Chinese vaccines.

Mr. Tang, who is seen in Paraguay as a key interlocutor with the Chinese government, said it was conceivable that Chinese vaccine manufacturers would sell vaccines to Paraguay, even without formal diplomatic relations. But he said it was the duty of officials in Paraguay to take the first step.

“If the Paraguayan government wants to talk to China, they can talk to China,” he said. “It’s very simple. China is there, not under pressure on Paraguay, nor is it threatening Paraguay. ”

Officials in Taiwan recently accused China of using “vaccination diplomacy” to pressure Paraguay to sever ties with Taipei. Zhao Lijian, spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said China was not doing anything of the sort and called its vaccine trade “completely on top” and humanitarian.

“The virus can spread across borders, but humanity’s love also transcends borders,” he told reporters.

This week, China’s major vaccine manufacturer Covid-19, Sinovac, made a gesture that will surely fuel speculation about Beijing’s plans in Paraguay. The Paraguay-based South American football federation Conmebol said it was receiving a donation of 50,000 doses of CoronaVac, the Covid-19 vaccine manufactured by Sinovac in Beijing.

“The leaders of this company have understood the enormous social and cultural value of football in South American countries,” the federation’s president, Alejandro Domínguez, said in a statement, calling the donation a ‘noble gesture’.

Despite all these signals, Taiwan’s position in Paraguay may be safer than it looks, said Lee McClenny, who served until last September as U.S. ambassador to Paraguay. While cabinet members and businessmen have put President Mario Abdo Benítez under pressure to forge ties with China, the Chinese government has not shown much interest in turning Paraguay around, he said.

“On the ground, I have not seen very effective efforts to make it happen,” he said. McClenny said.

In addition, Mr. McClenny added, the president of Paraguay is particularly proud of the relationship with Taiwan, which was mediated by his father in the fifties, who served as personal secretary to Alfredo Stroessner, the dictator who ruled the country for 35 years. And Taiwanese aid has made a huge impact on the enclosed, impoverished country.

“It’s effective and benefits people’s lives in a real way,” he said. McClenny said about Taiwan’s aid.

The Biden government has expressed its discomfort over the prospect that Paraguay could end an agreement with China. In a telephone conversation with Mr. Abdo Benítez last month called on Foreign Minister Antony J. Blinken to urge the Paraguayan government to “continue working with democratic and global partners, including Taiwan, to overcome this global pandemic”, according to a summary call provided by the State Department.

The message ranks opposition lawmakers, including left-wing senator Esperanza Martínez, who served as health minister from 2008 to 2012. Me. Martínez has long preferred to establish relations with China, claiming that Paraguay will benefit in the long run by expanding trade. She said Washington’s admonition was immoral.

“We are loyal to people who impose rules on us while we are dying,” she said. “Our allies vaccinate people in the mornings, afternoons and evenings, while preventing us from getting vaccinated, and saying that we will become communists.”

Santi Carneri reported on Asunción; Amy Qin of Taipei, Taiwan; and Sui-Lee Wee of Singapore.