Chinese Pressure Shreds Taiwan’s Ties With South Africa

Just months after Oliver Liao arrived in Pretoria as Taiwan’s de facto ambassador, South Africa began a campaign to downgrade its relationship with the island — thrusting him into the epicenter of a geopolitical drama.

While South Africa decades ago broke formal ties with Taipei in favor of relations with Beijing, now the country wanted to dilute things further, a sign of how the chip hub is increasingly being squeezed on the global stage. In April last year, a formal notice arrived to move Liao’s office from the seat of government to the financial hub of Johannesburg, ending five decades of representation in South Africa’s capital.