MULTIPRONGED APPROACH:
China has sought to pressure Palau across a number of fronts, but the island nation has staunchly resisted overtures to ditch Taiwan
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By Chen Yun and Esme Yeh / Staff reporter, with staff writer
Palau has been firm in backing Taiwan despite Chinese pressure that uses tourism economics, cyberattacks and criminal infiltration as tools to threaten the Pacific ally into renouncing its recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state.
The Presidential Office yesterday announced that Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴) would visit Palau from Saturday to Wednesday next week at the invitation of Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr.
Whipps in April said in an interview that China had outspokenly asked Palau to “denounce Taiwan.”
Photo courtesy of the Presidential Office
“And we have said: ‘We have no enemies, but nobody tells us who our friends are,’” he said.
Whipps has told reporters multiple times that China is weaponizing tourism to pressure Palau to take a diplomatic shift from Taiwan to China.
In 2017, Beijing issued a group tour ban against Palau to undermine the tourism-dependent country’s economy.
It continued to issue travel warnings against Palau for so-called safety concerns over the past few years to disrupt the flow of tourists.
Beijing used tourism as an enticement, promising Whipps “a million Chinese tourists” if Palau cut ties with Taiwan.
Palau has not accepted such trade-offs.
China extended its harassment to Palau’s national security with “gray zone” tactics.
Palau suffered from large-scale cyberattacks in 2024, with more than 20,000 classified government documents leaked to the dark Web.
Content of the leaked documents mainly involved classified Palau-Taiwan exchanges, and military deployments by the US and Japan in the Indo-Pacific region.
That heightened international vigilance and Whipps at the time said all signs pointed to Beijing being the mastermind although it denied the allegations.
The same year, an intercontinental ballistic missile test-fired by China traveled through the airspace of Palau without prior notice.
That blatant intimidation drove Palau to seek assistance from the US in deploying a Patriot air defense system.
China is alleged to have infiltrated Palau through crime syndicates. A Pacific Economics report published last year said that transnational criminal organizations with Chinese backgrounds have been investing in Palau.
Such investments, disguised as land or resort development projects, registered shell companies in Palau to conduct illegal activities such as gambling, fraud or money laundering.
These crime syndicates have been used by Beijing to develop its local relations in Palau.
They sent members of the China Zhi Gong Party to lobby the Palauan government to change its policy toward Taiwan.
Funds and personnel were funneled through the syndicates, while agreements were signed with local media outlets to provide and publish pro-China content.
The Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project in 2023 reported that Tia Belau newspaper founder Moses Uludong in 2018 established Palau Media Group on advice from a Chinese merchant surnamed Tian (田).
Palau Media Group was primarily funded by Overseas Chinese Big Data Group, a Shenzhen-based group that has close ties with China’s military and public security agencies.
While the effort failed to launch due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Tian arranged multiple visits by Uludong to China and sent pro-China stories for the cover of Tia Belau.
Despite relentless pressure from China, Whipps never wavered in his support for Taiwan.
Last year, Whipps in an address said Palau was “already at war with China” given the constant threat.
“The best way to combat this is through partnership with like-minded nations,” he said at the time.
On a visit to Taiwan last year, Whipps said Palau would stand firmly with Taiwan against any actions attempting to silence or isolate democratic partners.
Additional reporting by CNA
