Mission & Justice

Sian Powell; 12/6/08

Ground-breaking Australian research has uncovered the extent of China’s secretive aid program in the Pacific - estimated to have grown almost nine-fold since 2005, to $US293million ($309 million) last year. Lowy Institute research associate Fergus Hanson, who has spent months delving into China’s aid program, said yesterday that although China received $US1.76 billion in assistance in 2005, the nation had been busily pledging and disbursing aid around the world, particularly in the Pacific. “The main driver of Chinese aid to the region remains halting and reversing diplomatic recognition of Taiwan,” Mr Hanson told a Lowy Institute audience in Sydney yesterday. “China regards Taiwan as a renegade province, and has for several decades waged a largely successful battle to wrest diplomatic recognition from ‘the other China’. This battle remains particularly intense in the Pacific.” China aids eight developing Pacific Island Forum nations that recognise its sovereignty - the Cook Islands, Fiji, Micronesia, Niue, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.

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Rowan Callick; 17/5/08

Papua New Guinea’s Planning Minister Paul Tiensten signed, when acting foreign minister, a draft communique switching the country’s diplomatic recognition from China to Taiwan. And lawyer Florian Gubon, a former chairman of Telikom, PNG’s equivalent of Telstra, said he was authorised by Prime Minister Michael Somare to receive $220,000 from the Taiwan Government for the travel costs of a delegation to Taipei led by Mr Tiensten. These are among the latest revelations in the growing scandal involving $32million deployed by the outgoing Taiwan Government via two Taiwanese middle-men to secure PNG’s switched loyalty 18 months ago.

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Rowan Callick; 5/5/08

The Taiwan Government has lost $32 million it gave to two men who claimed they could use it to persuade the Papua New Guinean Government to switch its diplomatic loyalty from Beijing to Taipei. The scandal came to light when Taiwan began legal proceedings in Singapore to recover the money and Singaporean newspaper Lianhe Zaobao reported on the case. The men who were given the money, which was paid into a Singapore bank account on their behalf, are Wu Shih-tsai, a 55-year-old brought up in Taiwan but now a Singapore citizen, and Ching Chi-ju, aged 64, who lives in Taiwan but has an American passport.

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3/5/08

Greenpeace activists clashed with a Taiwanese long-line fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean, painting the word “pirates” on the side of the vessel and raiding its lines. Greenpeace accused the vessel of hunting down precious marine species - including an endangered turtle - in international waters north-east of the Solomon Islands, which the green group wants declared as reserves. According to Greenpeace, activists confronted the long-line vessel, called the Ho Tsai Fa 18, and began to free the fish, sharks and endangered turtle caught on its hooks. They then took one of the vessel’s radio beacons and a fishing line.

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3/5/08

More than $30 million vanished into private hands when Taiwan tried to forge diplomatic ties with Papua New Guinea, a scandal that could hurt the island’s image and embarrass the departing President. Taiwan’s foreign ministry has asked prosecutors to pursue two foreign nationals appointed in 2006 to offer PNG $T1 billion ($35 million) in aid, the Foreign Minister, James Huang, told a news conference yesterday. The aid was meant to persuade PNG to ditch ties with China in favour of Taiwan.

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