MOSCOW, Mar 26 Honduras severed diplomatic relations with Taiwan and established them with China, Taipei severed relations with Tegucigalpa in response.
«
«The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, on behalf of the President of the Republic, informed Taiwan of the decision to sever diplomatic relations between the two countries,» it says in a statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Honduras, published on Twitter.
The Foreign Ministry noted that Honduras recognizes the existence of only one China, and called the PRC authorities the only legitimate government of this country.
Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu (Wu Zhaose) followed this by announcing the termination of diplomatic relations with Honduras.
Later China Central Television announced the establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Tegucigalpa.
Earlier, Honduran President Siomara Castro instructed Foreign Minister Eduardo Reina to begin work on establishing official relations with China. Against this backdrop, Taiwan's Foreign Ministry expressed serious concern to Honduras, asking the country not to make «wrong decisions» and then recalled its ambassador to the Central American country.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin called Honduras' intention to establish diplomatic relations with PRC historical trend and welcomed it.
Thirteen states remained diplomatic allies of Taiwan: Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Eswatini, Tuvalu and the Vatican. With the rest of the states, Taipei maintains ties through its «economic and cultural representations.»
In the past, there were more countries maintaining diplomatic relations with Taiwan, but in recent years, many have decided to break them, establishing official relations with China, including El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Burkina Faso, Panama, the Pacific state of Kiribati, the Solomon Islands, Nicaragua.
Official relations between the central government of the PRC and its island province were interrupted in 1949, when the Kuomintang forces, defeated in a civil war with the Communist Party of China led by Chiang Kai-shek moved to Taiwan. Business and informal contacts between the island and mainland China resumed in the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, the parties began to contact through non-governmental organizations — the Beijing Association for the Development of Relations across the Taiwan Strait and the Taipei Foundation for Cross-Strait Exchanges.