MEXICO CITY/TAIPEI -- With the Beijing Olympics and a twice-a-decade Communist Party congress coming up in 2022, China is accelerating efforts to sever Taiwan's diplomatic ties with nations in Central America and the Caribbean.
"Honduras will immediately open diplomatic and commercial connections with mainland China" -- or so promises Xiomara Castro, the presidential candidate from the leading opposition Liberty and Refoundation Party, or Libre, in the country's Nov. 28 election. Honduras has maintained diplomatic ties with Taipei for over 80 years.
The race was initially expected to favor the ruling National Party's Nasry Asfura, mayor of the capital city of Tegucigalpa, with TV presenter Salvador Nasralla and Castro trailing. But Nasralla ended up endorsing Castro instead, turning the race into a one-on-one battle between her and Asfura.
Castro now leads the field at 38%, ahead of Asfura at 21%, according to the latest poll by Honduras' Centro de Estudio para la Democracia, or CESPAD.
Her rise comes as China intensifies military pressure on Taiwan while wooing the island's diplomatic partners in an effort to isolate Taipei on the international stage. Eight of the 15 countries that currently recognize Taiwan are in Central America and the Caribbean.
Taiwan is alarmed by the developments in Honduras. Taipei's Foreign Ministry alleges that China is using a democratic election to portray diplomatic ties between Taiwan and Honduras as unstable, suggesting that Beijing may be behind Castro's pledge.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin had said that Taiwan "is an inalienable part of China's territory" back in September, before Castro's gains in the polls.
"We solemnly warn the Taiwan authorities that 'Taiwan independence' is a dead end," Wang said.
China has been increasing its influence in Central America and the Caribbean since 2016, when independence-leaning Tsai Ing-wen was elected to her first term as Taiwan's president. Panama cut ties with Taipei in favor of Beijing in 2017, followed by El Salvador and the Dominican Republic in 2018.
Beijing has tapped infrastructure development and other economic assistance as well as, more recently, coronavirus vaccines as part of its charm offensive. In 2018, a Chinese consortium won a bid to build a fourth bridge over the Panama Canal for $1.5 billion. China provided a total of $2 million to help Panama's coronavirus response and health system between February and June of last year.
China in 2019 also promised $500 million in public investment for El Salvador, including the construction of a national library and a stadium. It could urge other countries facing political and economic instability to jump ship, like Nicaragua, which has plunged into a dictatorship, and Haiti, whose president was assassinated earlier this year.
Taiwan "knows it has no chance of outspending China," a diplomatic source familiar with the matter said. Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu in 2018 said the island will not engage in "dollar diplomacy" -- promising massive assistance in order to advance its diplomatic agenda -- like China.
In February, Taiwan said it would open a representative office -- a de facto embassy -- in Guyana. The South American country has diplomatic ties with China, but was distancing itself from Beijing at that time.
But Guyana's foreign ministry rolled back the plan the very next day. "The government has not established any diplomatic ties or relations with Taiwan and as a result of the miscommunication of the agreement signed, this agreement has since been terminated," it said in a statement.
The U.S. is working indirectly to counter Chinese efforts to isolate Taiwan.
While China distributes homegrown COVID-19 vaccines to its partners in Central and South America, countries aligned with Taiwan were frustrated by the island's inability to secure enough doses. Washington decided in July to provide additional shots to Honduras and other South and Central American countries. It also gave roughly 300,000 doses to Nicaragua in October through COVAX, the World Health Organization-backed framework for global vaccine distribution.
Latin America and the Caribbean have long been considered the geopolitical "backyard" of the U.S., crucial to American supply chains and national security. Though the area took a back seat under former President Donald Trump's administration, President Joe Biden has revived Washington's focus on the region, sending Secretary of State Antony Blinken there last month.
"If China can manage to significantly reduce the number of countries over there that are still recognizing Taiwan, it will cause a huge diplomatic blow to not only Taiwan but also the U.S.," said Chen Chien-kai, who chairs the Department of International Studies at Rhodes College in Tennessee.
European nations aligned with the U.S. are also eager to curb China's international clout. Wu recently became the first Taiwanese foreign minister to tour Europe in roughly two and a half years. A French parliamentary delegation also visited Taiwan in October.