Taiwan’s constrained official diplomacy took a further blow this evening after the Presidential Office announced that President Lai Ching-te’s (賴清德) trip to Eswatini was cancelled due to Chinese pressure, the night before he was due to depart.
Three countries that lie on the flight path from Taiwan to Eswatini cancelled overflight permits, calling the trip into question and ultimately leading to its abandonment. Those countries are Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar.
The Presidential Office alleges the permit cancellations were due to pressure from China, saying Beijing had leveraged its economic ties with those countries to compel them, and that China had African countries within a “debt trap.” Eswatini is the only remaining diplomatic ally of Taiwan in Africa.
At an emergency briefing for the press at 6 p.m. in Taipei, Secretary-General to the President Pan Men-an (潘孟安) said that the flight plan applied for had gone through considerable approval, in accordance with international flight safety. The three countries “only within recent days, without warning and without any reason,” canceled the flight permits, said Joseph Wu (吳釗燮), Secretary-General of the National Security Council.
Other countries seemingly tried to aid in negotiations, but were unsuccessful. Lai wrote on Facebook that he wanted to “thank the partner countries that stood by us and offered their help during this time.”
“The KMT also calls on Mainland China to exercise restraint, reduce pressure, and provide the ROC government with sufficient diplomatic space,” said Yin Nai-ching (尹乃菁), director of the Culture and Communications Committee for the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), in a statement released to Taiwanese media TVBS. She added that the postponement of President Lai’s visit to Eswatini is unrelated to the recent meeting between KMT Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) and Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平).
Countries control the airspace directly above their territory, which is a part of their sovereignty. But most countries also have a further airspace obligation: a Flight Information Region (FIR), within which a country is responsible for the safe management of air traffic. For countries which are islands or have a coastline, their FIR will typically extend far beyond their sovereign territory so that flights over the ocean are also managed safely. Depending on the distance to the next landmass, an FIR can potentially extend for hundreds, even thousands of miles.
To fly through the sovereign airspace of a country without landing requires overflight permission. If the plane is carrying senior officials from another country, then specific diplomatic overflight permits are required. The permission for Lai’s trip should have been arranged multiple days in advance.
It’s impossible to be certain, but Lai’s flight could probably have reached Eswatini without flying through the territorial airspace of Mauritius, Seychelles and Madagascar. But it perhaps could not do so without entering their FIRs.
The language used by the Taiwanese officials, that the trip was cancelled after “careful assessment by the national security team, and considering the safety of the head of state, the visiting group, and flight safety,” suggests Taiwan believed it had still had options for conducting the trip but that they entailed risk.
Beyond the embarrassment of the last minute cancellation and the loss of face at having been unable to prevent this Chinese pressure, there is a much greater problem for Taiwan now.
China has shown that it is both capable and willing to weaponize its relationship with other countries to stop Taiwan’s president travelling to diplomatic allies, even if it can’t persuade the allies themselves to flip and recognize China instead of Taiwan. This has implications far beyond Eswatini.
Most of Taiwan’s remaining diplomatic allies are situated in the Caribbean and Central America. Taiwan will potentially be reliant on the U.S. pressuring or persuading countries in the region not to bow to Beijing’s own pressure and restrict access to their FIRs, otherwise Lai could lose the ability to visit those states.
Guatemala also takes on a certain outsize importance because it is now the only Central American diplomatic ally of Taiwan that has direct territorial access to the Pacific, meaning a Taiwanese plane could fly there without crossing into the FIR or airspace of a country that recognizes China. But even then Guatemala’s FIR is shared with other countries.
All of this is thrown into sharper focus because of the reports last fall that Lai had intended to transit through the U.S. on the way to visit Paraguay, Guatemala and Belize, and had been denied permission. That’s substantively a different situation; Taiwanese presidents usually stop for multiple days in major U.S. cities on such trips rather than flying over the country. But it was reported at the time that the U.S. cancelled Lai’s plans because it was trying to negotiate with China over trade.
Taipei may not be feeling so comfortable about relying on U.S. support in this matter.
There are still Taiwan’s diplomatic allies in the Pacific; they also lie within the U.S.’s FIR. Perhaps that’s also not reassuring.
Taiwan has only 12 remaining diplomatic allies. Tonight, the beleaguered democracy goes to sleep with an entirely unwelcome new thorn in its side.
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