中国媒体博克

Allow me to follow up on yesterday’s post about the battle between China and Taiwan for allies, and pursue a different angle.

Yesterday’s post was about how Taiwan lost nearly $30 million earmarked for wooing Papua New Guinea into establishing diplomatic relations. The money vanished. But according to Roland Soong’s ESWN blog, Taiwanese media now say maybe the island’s leaders didn’t just stupidly lose the money. They may have been waiting for a juicy kickback from the deal — $20 million for Papua New Guinea, $10 million for their own pockets.

Sad. The real losers are the poorer Taiwanese taxpayers.

Along the same vein, a new study caught my eye today, seeming to undercut the logic that nation’s with increasing trade dependence on China would naturally offer it greater political support. That might not be happening so sharply.

The Congressional Research Service, an investigative branch of the U.S. Congress, produced the report, titled China’s Foreign Policy and ‘Soft Power’ in South America, Asia and Africa. Here’s the link.

The report (on pages 19-20) says that a study of U.N. voting records found that nations with increased trade dependence on China do not appear more willing to vote with China’s interests.

Here’s the pertinent section:

A 2006 study by the Inter-American Dialogue examined the 1991-2003 U.N. voting records of several major Latin American countries – Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Venezuela – and concluded that the increased Chinese trade with the region in recent years has had no discernable effect on the voting behavior of these nations. The study also looked at several countries having diplomatic relations with Taiwan – Costa Rica (before it switched diplomatic relations to the PRC), Panama, and Paraguay – and found little difference in voting coincidence with China between countries that recognize China and those that recognize Taiwan.  Cuba, for political reasons, stands out as the Latin American country with a high voting coincidence with China, although increases in economic linkages do not appear to have had an impact on Cuba’s voting behavior.

So maybe both Taiwan and China aren’t getting much bang for their buck on the diplomatic front.

Then again, China is not necessarily looking to boost trade with Latin America just to increase its diplomatic clout. It's boosting trade for the sake of greater trade.

China now has signed "strategic partnership agreements" with Brazil (1993), Venezuela (2001), Mexico (2003)  and Argentina (2004). Another interesting tidbit from the report:  China also has oil and gas exploration contracts with Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba.