Michael Bleby
10 October 2008
analysis
Johannesburg — HUANG Yi-sheng retired to SA in 1992. Aged 37, the former manager for Taiwanese semiconductor maker UMC and his wife settled with their two small children in Bronkhorstspruit, north-east of Pretoria.
He left Taiwan because he was worried about the island's tense relations with the mainland. "Mainland China was threatening Taiwan with missiles," he recalls.
He was concerned about the education prospects for his children, and also wanted to become a tea farmer.
After five years of learning in Tzaneen, however, Huang gave up on tea. Surging land prices made it unprofitable. He focus ed on something else -- Buddhism. In 2004 he moved to Blantyre in Malawi where he built an orphanage, the Amitofo Care Centre, that accommodates 256 children. Huang, now a full-time monk who goes by a Buddhist name, is building a similar orphanage in Malawi's capital, Lilongwe. He has completed another one in Harare and plans others in Lesotho and Swaziland.
"When we were kids the Christian missionaries came to Taiwan and did a lot of good things to us," he says. "Now I'm only returning what we got from others."
Such missionary work by Zhong Ing, as he is now known, is not what most people would associate with Taiwan, a modern economy of 23-million people set up by nationalists who fled the mainland in 1949. But it is harder to say what Taiwan these days stands for or what it wants from other countries.
The issue is relevant in Africa, where, blessed with great mineral resources, the Chinese mainland has become the only story in town. Taiwan's advanced economy does not need Africa's minerals. And country after country has swapped recognition of Taiwan for China.
It lost its United Nations seat in 1971. SA switched to the mainland in 1998. Malawi, the latest, did so in January.
Taiwan, which today celebrates the 97th anniversary of the Republic of China (founded on the mainland), is only recognised worldwide by 23 countries, four of them African. What does Taiwan want from them?
"We want to share our development activities with a lot of our African friends. We have the ability to co-operate, to improve the quality of life of African people," says Taipei's acting representative in SA, Dick Fu. But not everyone is as diplomatic.
"It's about international recognition," says Martyn Davies of Stellenbosch University's Centre for Chinese Studies. "They're saying: 'We need a minimum number of countries to give us some semblance of international recognition. If not, we are seen increasingly as part and parcel of the PRC (People's Republic of China)'. "
Davies says the recognition game is "over" in Africa. China has won and Taiwan cannot compete. Fu effectively agrees, saying increasing recognition in Africa "is not our goal right now".
Despite this, stories abound of the two jostling for influence in Africa. In Zambia's 2006 election campaign, opposition leader Michael Sata, a critic of Chinese investment in the copper-rich country, was accused by detractors of taking funding from Taiwanese interests. In March, a Chinese diplomat in Malawi said he suspected a local newspaper wrote an unfavourable story under the influence of the Taiwan government. He also alleged Taiwan was sponsoring opposition political parties .
Fu says that since Taiwan's new president, Ma Ying-jeou, took power in May, the island's relations with the PRC have improved. His government does not use such tactics, he says. Asked if they did it in the past, he finesses the question.
"I think after the new president was inaugurated, the foreign policy is what I told you."
On the South African side, Davies says, the Pretoria government does not pay enough attention to Taiwan.
"Our foreign policy towards Taipei has been obsolete. It's too politicised. Recognising the PRC as the truly representative government of the Chinese, which it is, does not preclude us from increased commercial transactions with Taiwan."
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