China’s ambassador to Australia, Xiao Qian, yesterday rejected that his country had bribed Nauru, the South Pacific island nation that announced on Monday the severing of diplomatic relations with Taiwan to get closer to Beijing
At a press conference that lasted more than two hours at the Chinese embassy in Canberra, Xiao Qian denied that Beijing had offered financial incentives to Nauru to sever ties with Taiwan.
“To be honest, we have no interest in getting involved in these issues,” he said, quoted by the Australian press. “There was no money, there was nothing”, he highlighted.
In a brief statement released on Monday, the government of Nauru, a small South Pacific nation with strong ties to Australia, stressed that the country recognizes the one-China principle and intends to resume full diplomatic relations with Beijing, which it considers Taiwan a province of its own, despite acting as a sovereign political entity.
Nauru’s decision followed Saturday’s elections in Taiwan, where vice president and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate William Lai, a critic of Beijing, won with 40% of the vote.
The Chinese diplomat also dismissed rumors that China is trying to sign a security pact with Nauru, as it did in 2022 with the Solomon Islands, setting off a race between Beijing, Washington and their partners, including Canberra, to increase influence in a once neglected region.
Xiao noted yesterday that there is “room” for Australia and China to “coexist” in the Indo-Pacific and that the two countries can be “partners” rather than “rivals”, although he warned Australia against changing its stance on Taiwan, referring to its respect for the ‘One China’ principle.
The 2022 victory of Labor’s Anthony Albanese gave a boost to Sino-Australian relations, which were tense during Scott Morrison’s term, especially when, in 2020, the then Australian leader called for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19.