Taiwan’s Shrinking Circle of Allies Includes Belize

Belize is one of only 12 governments worldwide that maintain formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and one of seven in Latin America and the Caribbean working to keep the island’s case alive at the United Nations, according to a United Press International (UPI) analysis by Thomas R. Field published Monday.

On September 18, the UN ambassadors of Belize, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines joined their counterparts from Palau and the Marshall Islands in a letter to Secretary-General António Guterres calling for Taiwan’s meaningful participation in the international system. Field writes that Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, Palauan President Surangel Whipps Jr., and King Mswati III of Eswatini made the same case in their General Assembly addresses on September 23.

Taiwan’s other allies in the region are Paraguay, Guatemala, Haiti, St. Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Taiwan has lost Panama (2017), the Dominican Republic and El Salvador (2018), Nicaragua (2021), and Honduras (2023) to Beijing.

Field says that in Belize’s case, the relationship has produced a concrete trade result. In July 2025, Taiwan approved Belizean shrimp exports after more than two years of technical and regulatory work, opening a market that averaged more than $349 million in annual shrimp imports from 2020 through 2024.

Elsewhere, Field writes that Taiwan’s cooperation includes semiconductor training in Guatemala, a rice project in southern Haiti, hospital and port support in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and a “Seven Crops Project” in Saint Lucia aimed at cutting food imports. Taiwan’s foreign ministry calls the approach the Diplomatic Allies Prosperity Project, launched in 2024 by Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung. In July, the ministry opened a related economic and trade office to draw private Taiwanese firms into allied markets.

Field notes the arrangement carries trade-offs. China is the world’s second-largest economy and a major trading partner across the region, and Beijing makes acceptance of its one-China principle a condition of relations. He writes that each remaining ally has weighed that choice for itself.