ECONOMY

From China, to El Salvador: these are the Christmas gifts of the Asian giant

The aid that China offered to El Salvador in a cooperation plan is huge.

Aerial view of football stadium.

Aerial view of football stadium. / Photo: Pexels – Reference Image

LatinAmerican Post | Alberto Castaño

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Leer en español: De China, para El Salvador: estos son los regalos navideños del gigante asiático

El Salvador President Nayib Bukele walks on the red carpet in Beijing on his state visit to the Republic of China, strengthening the very convenient cooperation ties for the small Central American country.

After breaking relations with Taiwan in August 2018, El Salvador joins the already long list of countries that do not recognize the Chinese island as an independent country and this is due to the need to establish commercial alliances with the Asian giant.

China offered a lot of help to El Salvador in a cooperation plan that frankly did not leave much scope for Salvadorans against the duality of continuing to recognize Taiwan as an independent country or establish diplomatic relations with China.

The country with the highest global economic growth requires, those countries that are interested in establishing diplomatic relations, to ignore Taiwan as a separate country. China refers to the island as a "renegade province" and so it must be observed by the rest of the nations that claim to be diplomatic and commercial partners with the third largest country in the world.

Bukele leaves China with full hands after receiving “a gigantic non-refundable cooperation” help from the government that presides over Xi Jinping. A gigantic stadium for football is one of the concessions that the government of China generously grants to El Salvador. It should be remembered that it is not the only sports stadium in the region donated by the Asian country, as the national stadium in Costa Rica was also a gift from that nation. They do not have diplomatic relations with the 'renegade province' either.

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But perhaps one of the most important gifts that China makes to Salvadorans is a sewage treatment plant that will treat half of the sewage that ends up in Lake Ilopango. It will transform those waters into drinking water that will supply to the metropolitan region of San Salvador and the sewage treatment system of the Surf City circuit. China will be on charge of the construction of platforms and boardwalks for this tourist complex accompanied by underground wiring.

To these important gifts is added a national library that has been announced by the president of the country who, if he had not broken diplomatic relations with Taiwan, would have received these important contributions announced as Christmas gifts.

There are only 15 countries around the world that have relations with Taiwan, since they recently withdrew from the political spectrum of support for the Chinese Republic, as the Taiwanese call their country, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, small nations in the far Oceania too a couple of years ago Panama and the Dominican Republic.

After being recognized by 71 countries in 1969 and ignored by 48 who remained faithful to Beijing, today things are at (literally) another price, because in America only Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, Paraguay, San Cristóbal and Nieves and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines maintain their diplomatic relations with Taipei.

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Clearly, China's interest in applying what has been known as the "diplomacy of the checkbook" is to expand its commercial network with Latin America and counterbalances its economic rival United States, every day further from good relations with some Central American countries as a result of the resounding epithets that President Trump has used to refer to Latin America.

While the United States thinks about lifting a wall to divide North America and Latin America, China thinks about building commercial bridges that join a new silk route to this region with the Asian giant.

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