The Cultural, Social and Political Contexts of Diplomacy: Taiwan and Its Pacific Island Allies

Abstract

Given Taiwan's limited formal diplomatic recognition, this paper examines interviews with diplomats/officials from one of Taiwan's Pacific allies, Tuvalu, as well as interviews with other Pacific diplomats in Taiwan and Taiwanese diplomats/officials, to outline diverging conceptions of diplomacy in Taiwan's official alliances. The paper first analyses interviews with Pacific diplomats in Taiwan, discussing how diplomats link meanings of diplomacy to socio-cultural protocols in their home countries. Three themes that emerge in explanations of diplomacy are bartering/exchange, building/maintaining friendships and properly building/reinforcing inter-island relationships. The paper next considers how interviews with Tuvaluan diplomats/officials focused on themes similar to those outlined by other Pacific diplomats but also revealed specific cultural mechanisms of diplomacy including the alofa, or ‘giving of gifts’. Subsequently, the article examines how Taiwanese diplomats/officials contemplate diplomacy, specifically how Taiwan's competition with China/the PRC has created negative conceptions of formal diplomacy. Taiwanese ideas of diplomacy often clash with Tuvaluan/Pacific conceptions because Taiwan sees diplomatic allies as always on the verge of severing ties and inherently disloyal. The conclusion discusses how cultural values and their influence on conceptions of diplomacy can engender tension in diplomatic relationships while also underscoring the importance of seeing diplomacy as both multifaceted and multiply understood.