Taiwan, officially the Republic of China, has an established presence in St. Lucia, an island nation of 180,000 people that has been in the midst of a diplomatic tug-of-war between China and Taiwan for decades. Globally, Taiwan has been losing ground in its battle for diplomatic allies. St. Lucia is one of just 13 countries that formally recognizeTaiwan today, four of which are in the Caribbean.

St. Lucia has bounced back and forth between Beijing and Taipei, choosing Taiwan in 1984— the first time that the country first established diplomatic relations with either—then switching to China in 1997 and reverting to Taiwan in 2007.

At Taiwan’s beachside embassy on St. Lucia’s northwest shore, staff are all too aware that their country’s presence could disappear in an instant.

Daniel Lee, who now heads the Taiwanese technical mission in St. Lucia, was working in the Taiwanese Embassy in the Dominican Republic in April 2018 when Dominican leaders announced that they were severing diplomatic relations with Taiwan and recognizing China. Taiwan’s diplomats had 30 days to leave the country and vacate the embassy. Lee was the last man out after the embassy auctioned off its furniture and sold the picture frame that held President Tsai Ing-wen’s official portrait. With no document shredder left, Lee took the photo out of its frame and tore it up with his own hands.

“I was ripping it up and saying to President Tsai, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’” he recalled during an interview with Foreign Policy.

The closure of Taiwanese embassies has become increasingly common as Beijing has ramped up its efforts to sway countries to its side, often by offering increased trade and investment. China’s campaign has picked up speed since Tsai—of the Democratic Progressive Party, which promotes Taiwanese nationalism—took office in 2016. Since then, nine countries have switched recognition to China.

The most recent ally to switch was Honduras, this March, thanks to Chinese promises to finance a hydroelectric dam as well as rail and port projects. Some of these opportunities are offered through China’s Belt and Road Initiative, which eight countries in the Caribbean have joined, including former Taiwanese allies such as the Dominican Republic. This worries not only Taipei, which can’t compete with Beijing’s deep pockets, but also Washington, which sees growing Chinese influence in the Caribbean as alarmingly close to home.

Wary of this threat, Taiwan works vigorously to get the word out to St. Lucians about its assistance projects. Ambassador Peter Chen regularly appears at public events and in the local media. Taiwan’s flag is on signs promoting the free Wi-Fi that Taiwan provides in the island’s towns, on crates of fruit packaged in a Taiwanese-funded packhouse, and on billboards signaling Taiwanese-built farms, athletic courts, roads, administrative buildings, aquaponics centers, and even garbage bins.

“We might as well be called ‘St. Taiwan Lucia,’” said Cindy Eugene, who works in the St. Lucian Department of Commerce, remarking on the number of Taiwanese projects and Taiwan-funded opportunities in the country. Eugene herself is one of the many beneficiaries of Taiwanese generosity, studying in Taipei from 2018 to 2020 on a government-funded scholarship before returning to St. Lucia.

“We work hard,” said Shu-jung Chen, the deputy director general for Latin America and the Caribbean at Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “We have long-standing relations with our allies and strong people-to-people ties that are less about commercial interests than China’s form of engagement.”

One man manifests those people-to-people ties: Denys Springer, a public commentator and lecturer in management studies at the University of the West Indies, as well as a self-proclaimed “Taiwan fanatic.” Known by locals as “Mr. Taiwan,” he makes no secret of his preference, unabashedly advocating for island and walking around St. Lucia’s capital city of Castries in a baseball cap with “TAIWAN” embroidered across the bill.

After meeting some Taiwanese people while studying in London, he became interested in learning more, subsequently making many trips to the island both for travel and as a Taiwanese government-funded research fellow at Academia Sinica. Now, he frequently discusses China and Taiwan, both in lectures and during a regular TV slot, and is working on a book about Taiwanese identity and cross-strait relations.

“The Taiwanese ambassador himself said he’d never met anyone more pro-Taiwan than me,” Springer declared.

Most of Taiwan’s development projects in St. Lucia are well-adapted to a country this small, emphasizing personal connections and individual empowerment. They span everything from education to women’s issues, but the most visible are the agricultural projects in support of St. Lucia’s goal to reduce its reliance on imported food.

James Mathurin, a security guard, said that Taiwan’s projects have benefited St. Lucia much more than China’s did.

“Taiwan shows you how to do things for yourself, so when they go away, you still have skills,” he said. “The Chinese only show you how to invest and make money, but if you don’t have resources, how are you going to do that? The Taiwanese help you to use your hands and your mind, to have a skill in your hands.”

Taiwan’s interest in long-term education and training was praised by several people we spoke to. “The Taiwanese were just here last week asking about what kind of crops or workshops we are interested in,” said Charitina Alexander, a farmer in Soufrière.

Alexander hopes to attend one of the many workshops that Taiwan’s technical mission holds to introduce new crops and farming methods to St. Lucians. A typical workshop gives farmers seeds, planting and growing instructions, and recipe ideas. Among some of the new crops that Taiwan has introduced are wax apples, dragon fruit, Taiwanese bananas, and Chinese cabbage. Alexander said she’s especially interested in learning more about Chinese cabbage, given its high retail value.

It’s not a one-sided relationship. St. Lucia and other Taiwanese allies lobby on Taipei’s behalf, and regularly call for its inclusion in international bodies that exclude Taipei, such as the World Health Organization.

But some St. Lucians wonder how long Taiwan’s development projects will continue, should Taiwan no longer require such support in international organizations. Eugene, the former scholarship student, sees Taiwan’s need for international support as the entire reason behind its efforts in St. Lucia. “If one day Taiwan can stand on its own, I think these projects will disappear,” she said.

While Taiwan maintains strong unofficial relationships with countries such as the United States, its government values the few official ties that it still holds. Shu-jung Chen, from the Taiwanese Department of Foreign Affairs, said it is Taiwan’s right as a country to have official relationships and further explained that the quality of those relations, such as those with St. Lucia, is different than that of unofficial ones. Countries that do not recognize Taiwan are more prone to self-censor, for example, and are less likely to share information gathered from participation in international organizations.

Many St. Lucians expressed a deep ambivalence about the choice between Taiwan or China. While there are enthusiasts such as Mr. Taiwan, most people have a positive view of Taiwan because they or people they know have directly benefited from its largesse, not out of pro-Taiwan or anti-Chinese sentiment. Likewise, the switches in recognition between Beijing and Taipei are framed by St. Lucia’s government as responding to which country can offer the most to St. Lucia, not as the result of ideological or political affinities.

While the Taiwanese Embassy staff pride themselves on providing grassroots help, Beijing’s ambitions have been on a grander scale. Just north of the main airport, the Olympic rings atop the George Odlum Stadium are an Ozymandian remnant of China’s projects. Inside, a lone horse grazes beside the athletic track overlooked by the crumbling spectator stands, and nurses walk across the dead grass of the sun-drenched pitch. Named after a St. Lucian foreign minister from the Saint Lucia Labour Party (SLP) who helped bring about St. Lucia’s switch to recognizing China in 1997, the stadium has fallen into disrepair since a nearby hospital relocated there following a fire in 2009.

It is big infrastructure projects such as this, and the psychiatric hospital outside Castries—which China started and Taiwan finished after reestablishing ties—that St. Lucians most equate with the decade when their country recognized China. Many have bad memories of the construction process, with stories of China shipping in Chinese workers and equipment, and underpaying and sometimes mistreating the local workers that it did hire. Even so, some St. Lucians admitted that the infrastructure assistance that China offered filled a very real need.

Vincent La Corbiniere, the managing director of the St. Lucia Marketing Board, has worked at the Ministry of Agriculture for close to 30 years, and he has seen firsthand what both China and Taiwan can offer the island.

“Taiwan and China operate on two different levels,” La Corbiniere said. He added that Taiwan’s impact in the agricultural sector has been more positive than China’s, and personally prefers the Taiwanese way of doing things, but he recognizes the value of what China provided: “China has bigger projects and bigger infrastructure, and in terms of building nice, fancy bridges and hospitals, yes, China was welcome.”

St. Lucia maintained ties with Beijing until May 2007, following a return of the opposition United Workers Party (UWP) to power, when then-Foreign Minister Rufus Bousquet reestablished ties with Taipei. In breaking ties with Beijing, Bousquet had reportedly been acting independently from the newly elected Prime Minister John Compton, who himself had been the first St. Lucian leader to establish relations with Taipei during an earlier term as prime minister in the 1980s. While Compton dismissed Bousquet from his position in June of the same year, following what one person, speaking on background, characterized as a “palace coup,” he retained the renewed ties with Taipei.

Though China’s official development projects stopped the moment that St. Lucia switched recognition back to Taiwan, about 200 Chinese citizens still live and work in the country. Many have put down roots, married locals, and send their Creole-speaking children to local schools. In contrast, the even smaller Taiwanese population in St. Lucia consists almost exclusively of embassy and technical mission personnel. And according to one Chinese resident, these two Chinese-speaking populations don’t mix.

“You can easily tell who is Chinese and who is Taiwanese here because the Taiwanese won’t speak to you,” remarked a Chinese businessman who works in the hospitality industry and wished to remain anonymous. “It’s like they see us coming and think we’re going to try and convince them to reunify.”

A Chinese shop owner in Castries, who also asked to remain anonymous, would prefer that St. Lucia switch diplomatic recognition to China, if only to bring a Chinese Embassy back to ease his business and travel logistics. Beyond that practical purpose, he said he tries not to take a strong public stance on the China-Taiwan issue, though he reluctantly conceded that his loyalties lie with Beijing.

“I’m Chinese,” he said. “How can you ask or tell me not to support China, or to support Taiwan more than China?”

He admitted to not usually thinking about how China-Taiwan tensions play out in the Caribbean. “I just want to have a peaceful life,” he said. “Regular people don’t think about this. And it’s shameful that our problems at home are affecting other places.”

The shop owner is a member of the Saint Lucia-China Friendship Association, launched by a group of St. Lucians and Chinese expatriates in the decade when St. Lucia recognized China. The association used to be more active, organizing delegations and collaborating with the Chinese Embassy. But today, its 20 or so members mostly just help small businesses and host an annual luncheon at one of the Chinese restaurants in the country.

A multipurpose court funded by Taiwan in the capital city of Castries, St. Lucia, on May 8. TAILI NI FOR FOREIGN POLICY

Despite the well-integrated Chinese community, St. Lucians are wary of large-scale real estate development projects by Chinese private companies. The most well-known is the St. Kitts-registered Galaxy Group, a conglomerate with interests in international shipping, nickel mining in Southeast Asia, supercar clubs in China, and real estate developments linked to citizenship-by-investment programs (CIP) around the world, including in St. Lucia.

St. Lucia allows foreigners to acquire citizenship through investments in national funds, government bonds, or investments such as the Galaxy Group’s CIP-approved Les Canelles resort development in the southeast of the island, which has been under construction since 2020.

Chinese citizens are the largest group of CIP applicants, making up close to 40 percent of the 601 individuals who applied from 2019-2021. Many St. Lucians view the Galaxy Group’s activities and the CIP itself with suspicion, even with the current government’s efforts at increasing transparency. They were wary of the overall concept of having their country’s citizenship up for sale and expressed some frustration with the perceived lack of transparency around how the CIP funds were allocated.

“If the Galaxy Group was more successful in its investments in St. Lucia, that might make things harder for Taiwan” said Ambassador Peter Chen. “But luckily, they are not doing so well at the moment.”

This sense of the relative strength and resilience of Taiwan-St. Lucia ties comes after a period during which Taiwan became embroiled in local party politics. After St. Lucia reestablished ties with Taiwan in 2007, the opposition Saint Lucia Labour Party accused Taiwan’s then-Ambassador Tom Chou of being too close to the ruling UWP and funneling Taiwanese aid funds through local UWP constituency leaders and party offices. These allegations led the SLP to call for the ambassador’s dismissal on multiple occasions.

As he nonchalantly sliced open young coconuts with a machete at his roadside stand, Russel Jean remembered Chou with a hint of scandal. Jean, like many St. Lucians, faults Taiwan and Chou in particular for meddling too much in local politics at that time. “He was basically acting like a politician here, representing the UWP,” Jean said.

This tension subsided with the end of Chou’s posting in 2012, following the SLP’s return to power under Prime Minister Kenny Anthony in 2011. After reviewing the country’s relationship with Taiwan, Anthony announced that the SLP had decided to continue to recognize Taipei, noting that St. Lucia cannot act “like a Jack-in-the-Box, jumping from one country to another every few years.”

Since then, St. Lucia’s government has maintained its alliance with Taiwan despite successive changes between UWP and SLP governments, including under the current SLP government led by Prime Minister Philip J. Pierre.

“Saint Lucia has come to the realization that it can no longer play ‘ping-pong diplomacy’ between China and Taiwan,” said Earl Bousquet, the former editor of the Voicenewspaper and the president of the Saint Lucia-China Friendship Association.

Still, Taiwan fears the loss of its few remaining allies, including St. Lucia. Shu-jung Chen, from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said she believes China’s goal is to flip every Taiwanese ally.

Sitting at a cafe in Castries with stacks of research for a book he’s writing on Taiwan and photographs from his numerous visits to the island spread out on the table, Springer—Mr. Taiwan—animatedly described his hopes for the St. Lucia-Taiwan relationship. In his mind, if St. Lucians and Taiwan’s other allies were only better informed about Taiwan’s history and precarious geopolitical situation, they would not take Taiwan’s assistance for granted, and China would have a much harder time winning them over.

How would Mr. Taiwan feel if these more-informed fellow citizens decided to switch to China? “The important thing is that it’s what the people want,” Springer said. “I can always move to Europe.”