IT pains us to watch the loutish strategy being utilised by Taiwan to collect a US$28-million judgement against Grenada for non-payment of loans received from Taiwan’s Export-Import Bank in the 1990s.
We are told by an Associated Press report that lawyers representing Taiwan have filed papers compelling cruise lines and airlines to hand over any money they owe Grenada in fees or other payments.
Taiwan, the report tells us, resorted to this action after Grenada said it could no longer pay the loans as the country was having difficulty recovering from the economic shocks of Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and a drop in tourism after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.
Apparently, the Grenadian Government had approached the Taiwanese to renegotiate the loans, but that effort was flatly refused because Grenada had severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favour of China.
And therein lies the rub, because Grenada now finds itself in the midst of a decades-old maelstrom of hostility between Taiwan and China.
Essentially, after losing the 1949 civil war, the Kuomintang leaders who fled to Taiwan branded the communist Government in China as illegitimate, and successive administrations on the island since then have sought independence from the mainland.
But Beijing has always insisted that Taiwan belongs to China, and has included the island, as well as Hong Kong and Macau, in its “One China” principle.
Taiwan, in order to win support for its push to be recognised as an independent state, has been doling out foreign aid, particularly to developing countries, among them some Caricom states.
China, for its part, has been very active in spreading its influence in this and other regions across the world. Earlier this year a white paper on foreign aid issued by China’s State Council by the end of 2009 showed that 161 countries and more than 30 international and regional organisations had benefited.
Of the total, 30 are in Asia, 51 in Africa, 18 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 12 in Oceania and 12 are in Eastern Europe.
The white paper also informed us that 80 per cent of China’s foreign aid went to Asia and Africa, areas with the world’s poorest people.
We remember well that in 2004, Dominica broke long-held diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favour of China, no doubt influenced by China’s promise of four infrastructural development projects valuing more than US$100 million, all of which was in grants. The Chinese have so far delivered on three of those four projects, we are told.
We don’t expect that anyone in this region, or elsewhere for that matter, believes that these offers of assistance are made without conditions. That is the nature of relations between states, and they gather more strength when funds, especially in the form of grants, are involved.
When it comes to loans, we hold firmly that repayment is obligatory, and we have no doubt that the Grenadians share that view. We can, however, empathise with their position, given the shocks to their economy.
And while we can understand Taiwan’s anger at Grenada’s decision to cut ties in favour of China, we believe that this effort to seize port fees is, at best, iniquitous, especially because of the fact that Grenada has tried to renegotiate the loan.
There is, of course, a very poignant lesson in this issue for the Caribbean. It is simply that we need to get our economies in order to avoid borrowing.
(Source: Jamaica Observer http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/editorial/Grenada-Taiwan-debt-saga–Let-s–tek-sleep-mark-death-_10022469 )
