Does William Lai’s cancelled eSwatini trip show Beijing’s reach in Africa?
But Lai’s office announced late on Tuesday that the visit would be postponed after Seychelles, Mauritius and Madagascar cancelled previously approved overflight permissions without notice.
Taipei accused Beijing of pressuring the three African nations to withdraw clearance for Lai’s aircraft. With re-routing proving complex, Lai’s office said safety concerns left no choice but to delay the trip and instead send a special envoy.
In Beijing, the State Council’s Taiwan Affairs Office (TAO) thanked the three African countries for their decision “to adhere to the one-China principle”.
However, TAO spokeswoman Zhang Han rejected suggestions that Beijing used economic coercion to derail the trip.
“This is complete nonsense, self-deception, rumour-mongering and smearing, merely an attempt to cover up their own embarrassment,” Zhang said.
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The mainland’s foreign ministry said that all 53 African countries except eSwatini had diplomatic ties with Beijing and firmly adhered to the one-China principle.
“The facts are very clear: there has long been no such thing in the world as a ‘President of the Republic of China’,” the ministry said Wednesday, adding that any attempt to promote Taiwan independence was doomed to fail.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China and has never renounced the use of force to reunite it with the mainland. It also opposes any official exchanges between Taipei and other governments.
Most countries do not recognise self-governed Taiwan as an independent state. But Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the island and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
Eswatini is one of 12 states – and the only one in Africa – that maintain formal ties with Taiwan. The kingdom has long been a symbolically important partner for the island as various countries have switched official ties from Taipei to Beijing over the past decade.
Eswatini said on Wednesday that the cancellation of Lai’s planned visit did not change its “long-standing bilateral relations with Taiwan”.
The abrupt revocations highlighted Beijing’s growing influence in Africa, with analysts saying the episode could offer mainland China a new way to obstruct future visits by Taiwanese leaders.
“China’s pressure on Taiwan’s international participation has been constant, but forcing the cancellation of a presidential visit at the last minute is highly unusual,” said James Yifan Chen, a diplomacy professor at Tamkang University in New Taipei City.
“This underscores how China’s influence in Africa has grown significantly.”
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Chen added that over the past decade the ruling Democratic Progressive Party had focused on ties with like-minded partners such as the US, Japan and Nato members, while placing little emphasis on Africa.
Chen warned that for future visits to Latin American partners, Taiwan could not just rely on US transit approvals – it would need to consider whether neighbouring states might suddenly revoke overflight clearance.
Zhu Songling, a professor at Beijing Union University’s Institute of Taiwan Studies, said that in their decisions, the three African countries exercised “absolute and exclusive sovereignty over their national airspace”.
“This was … a deliberate, sovereign decision made by these nations based on international law,” he said.
Zhu said the decisions reflected the international community’s increasing wariness of the risks associated with “Taiwan independence” activities.
Yen Chen-shen, a researcher at National Chengchi University’s Institute of International Relations in Taipei, said that unless cross-strait relations improved, Taiwan would face broader diplomatic barriers.
Yen added that the Global South was increasingly sceptical of the United States, meaning Taiwan should be cautious about relying too heavily on Washington’s help.
The “Global South” refers to countries mainly in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Oceania that are generally characterised as developing, less developed, or economically disadvantaged.
Yen noted that since 1996, 10 African states had switched recognition away from Taipei.
Huang Kwei-bo, a diplomacy professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei, said the overflight cancellations were either a result of mainland China’s expanding influence to squeeze Taiwan’s space, or the Lai administration’s mishandling of already poor cross-strait ties.
He noted that former Taiwanese leader Tsai Ing-wen twice flew directly to eSwatini while in office, with the obstacles emerging only during Lai’s administration.
“That could reflect Beijing’s opposition to Taiwan independence, or accumulated dissatisfaction since the Tsai era,” he said.