INTL 190 - Haiti in a Transnational Context

Economic need and Haiti-Taiwan relationship

When dipping into the relationship between Haiti and Taiwan, their diplomatic relations maintained is based on Haiti's continuing poverty which Taiwan tries to satisfy. Haiti is one of the world's poorest countries with the main economy as agriculture, very backward infrastructure construction, underdeveloped industry owing to energy shortages, and unbelievably high unemployment rate. Although Haiti is a milestone in the independence of the black republic, its domestic political turmoil has never stopped since the founding of the political dictatorship. It fails to provide a peaceful environment for economic development, which causes continuous poverty.

As the requirement for the above domestic situation in Haiti, the ultimate goal of Haiti's financial relationship is to acquire support and assistance to deal with domestic poverty. According to Fritz Jean, Haiti has cultivated the habit of asking allies for money without any special condition (Charles a, 2018). This reveals that Haiti needs to significantly increase the amount of investment to promote local economic growth. That will be the focus of their negotiations with Taiwan in Taiwan's crisis of severing diplomatic ties. Under such a background and when the Dominican Republic and Burkina Faso have declared to stop their diplomatic ties with Taiwan in rapid sequence within a month, the Haitian President visited Taiwan for negotiation (Charles b, 2018). However, the Haitian President seemingly came with a wish list and started his speech at the welcoming ceremony by asking for Taiwan's deeper assistance. He mentioned the Haitian Foreign minister who revealed Taiwan's willingness to assist Haiti's development and boldly concluded that his purpose of the visit was to discuss specific plans for future development cooperation between the two countries. The result of the visit was a joint announcement between Taiwan and Haiti, which expressly wrote that the two sides reached a consensus to build new partnerships and alliances under certain new conditions, and agreed to set up an advanced working group to be in charge of planning economic development, infrastructure construction, investment attraction, resource using and new cooperation within 60 days. With a due date to finish and economy-based assistance content at such a sensitive period of severing diplomatic relationships, the announcement delivers the message that Haiti will consider not continuing the relationship with Taiwan if it cannot offer more economic assistance. 

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