Under this agreement, Taiwanese diplomats would continue to enjoy diplomatic privileges, including rates-free rentals along with diplomatic number plates and immunity. It was in the spirit of the overall relationship as an ambiguous, unofficial but official relationship, a way of partly satisfying honour for the Taiwanese, which had become large investors in both South Africa and the region, and also, as Nelson Mandela had acknowledged, important financial supporters of the ANC.

Since then, SA has maintained formal relations only with China, to which it is increasingly close and diplomatically enmeshed through BRICS and, conversely, its souring relations with the United States.

But even this downgraded relationship with Taiwan has not pleased China, which demands total submission to its one-China policy. The eager-to-please DIRCO has now sought to amend this status as Beijing’s supplicant, setting a precedent for other BRICS countries to send Taiwan packing from their capitals.

But is this move in the interests of South Africans? It’s worth questioning if only because DIRCO offers an unerringly accurate analytical and moral compass in its decision making, if only routinely out by 180 degrees.

There are several reasons why this move is a bad idea for SA, relating to trade, investment, and most importantly, the democratic character of Taiwan in contrast to its big brother, the PRC. It also comes at a time in geopolitics where such rash local moves might have wider, catastrophic consequences.

Even though China might comprise theworld’s second-largest economy (behind the US), its values are a long way from those expressed in South Africa’s Constitution. Where SA and Taiwan are multiparty democracies, China is a one-party autocracy where its leadership condemns “Western” (but also fundamentally − for now − South African) values, including the rule of law, press freedom and constitutionalism.

More than contempt

Where SA is at pains to protect minority interests, China represses minorities at home, treating Uighurs, Tibetans and other groups with more than contempt. Where SA is committed to the peaceful resolution of conflict, China supports Russia’s violence in Ukraine and is on its own land-grabbing exercise in the South China Sea.

The argument for taking the knee to Beijing dwells on the nearly $50-billion in two-way trade, which makes China SA’s largest single trading partner and a growing investor. Yet while it is vulnerable to a souring of relations, this dependency does not make South Africa powerless.

China’s dependence on South African extractives offers some leverage, and not just for Beijing. Just as China has to weigh the potential wider retaliatory costs of sanctions on the Czech Republic as an EU member, sanctions on SA would work both ways, given China’s appetite for commodities and the need for diversified markets for its manufactures. 

It should also not mean abandoning Taiwanese interests in SA.

With two-way trade averaging $2-billion annually, there are, according to Taipei, around 450 factories owned by Taiwanese entrepreneurs in SA employing some 40,000 people. Many of these are located in smaller towns, and there are also a large number in neighbouring Lesotho. The balance of trade volumes is, unlike the trade with China, 2:1 in SA’s favour.

More acute under Xi

Taiwan is also a market leader in sectors from which SA would like to benefit, and is also a prime exemplar, given the nature of Taiwanese growth − bottom-up, entrepreneur-led and less dependent on the state than the Chinese top-down, state-led alternative, the likes of which have failed dismally in Africa. This difference is more acute under Xi, who has increased state control of the economy by putting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party first.

Ninety percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, and around 70% of the rest. Instead of buckling under the pressure from China, just 180km across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan has grown stronger and more sophisticated over the last 75 years, driven by the existential costs of failure, succeeding not despite its vulnerability and relative isolation, but because of it.

Success for South Africa’s economy − with a GDP of $377-billion compared to Taiwan’s $795.5-billion and China’s $18-trillion − is more along the lines of the bottom-up Taiwan style of entrepreneurship than the top-down state-driven Chinese behemoth. This may also explain why, so far, Beijing can build the world’s largest network of high-speed rail but battles to produce the most advanced chips. There are clear limits and dangers when business is geared to serving the state and not vice versa. 

A further reason to leave things as they are is that Pretoria’s move is not being made to forestall an attempt by Taiwan to request a change in SA’s one-China policy. Worldwide, there are 112 similar offices in 58 countries maintaining Taiwan’s foreign interests and the interests of foreigners in Taiwanese businesses.

Strategically, this is also a bad time to submit to pressure for such a move, given the US’s partiality towards Taiwan and the increasing fear of a Chinese invasion of the island sometime in 2027.

“Deeply troubling”

As Senator Ted Cruz, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted on X this February: “The South African government seems to be going out of their way to alienate the United States and our allies. Their timeline to expel our Taiwanese allies from Pretoria is deeply troubling, undermines the national security interests of America and our allies, and will deepen tensions between the US and South Africa.”

It is questionable whether China is a strategic partner at a moment when much of the West (with which the bulk of SA’s trade and investment occurs) views Beijing as a strategic threat, at a tactical level disrupting the internet, hacking energy systems and conducting industrial espionage; while at a strategic level working with allies to smash the rules-based international order rather than finding the means to flourish within it (just as China has done), makes little sense.

It is impossible, no matter the DIRCO gymnastics, to delink China from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China is an enabler of Russian aggression, and by deeds alone SA is complicit in its defence of this aggression. 

“Czechia is committed to a one-China policy, but we have our own interpretation of what that means. It certainly does not exclude cultural and trade co-operation with Taiwan”, says a spokesperson from Prague. “After all, we do not have an embassy in Taipei, but an Economic and Cultural Office.” Resisting Chinese pressure was driven by a clear identification of Czechia’s national interests.

But it also came about because Prague does not like to be dictated to from outside. DIRCO’s strategy towards Taiwan and China is all about the surrender of South Africa’s sovereign interests and responsibilities to Beijing. It’s a nihilistic goal without a clear strategy. And it’s not in South Africa’s national (rather than the ANC’s party political) interests.

To paraphrase Julius Malema, fresh on the back of a bucket of Iranian pistachios, the ANC has now resold South Africa for a forkful of Peking duck.