Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te was forced to cancel a planned visit to Eswatini this week after China pressured three African nations into revoking permission for his aircraft to fly over their territories — a move that Taiwan’s government described as “deliberate intimidation” and a violation of international norms governing transit. The incident, confirmed by Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, drew sharp condemnation from Taipei and renewed attention to China’s systematic campaign to isolate Taiwan diplomatically, particularly in Africa, where its footprint has expanded dramatically over the past two decades.
Eswatini — formerly Swaziland — is Taiwan’s only remaining formal diplomatic ally on the African continent. For decades, it has stood apart from the wave of African nations that have shifted recognition from Taipei to Beijing, maintaining its relationship with Taiwan through multiple regime changes and intense Chinese economic pressure. Tuesday’s incident suggests that China’s willingness to use airspace restrictions as a diplomatic weapon has intensified.
The Route Blocked
According to Taiwanese officials, the presidential aircraft filed flight plans that required overflight permission from three nations — which officials declined to name publicly pending diplomatic efforts to resolve the situation. All three, according to two people with knowledge of the matter, had received demarches from Chinese embassies warning that granting overflight rights would be viewed as inconsistent with their One China policy commitments.
The practical effect was simple: without transiting airspace, the flight from Taipei to Eswatini — a route that cannot be covered non-stop by any commercially available aircraft — became impossible to file legally. Rather than risk an incident over sovereign airspace, Lai postponed the trip.
“This is exactly the kind of coercion that Beijing deploys against nations that maintain relations with Taiwan,” Taiwan’s Foreign Minister stated at a press briefing in Taipei. “They cannot win arguments in international forums, so they win them by suffocating our diplomatic activities.”
China’s Africa Diplomatic Campaign
The incident is the latest expression of a methodical Chinese campaign to ensure that Taiwan’s international space continues to contract. Since President Xi Jinping took office, Beijing has made diplomatic isolation of Taiwan a Foreign Ministry priority, deploying economic incentives, trade penalties, and quiet political pressure to peel away Taiwan’s remaining partners. When Malawi switched recognition in 2022, Africa lost one of Taiwan’s most active diplomatic outposts on the continent.
Eswatini has held firm through that entire period, partly because of historical ties — the late King Sobhuza II was one of the first African leaders to visit Taiwan in the 1960s — and partly because of the economic relationship that has grown between them. Taiwan has invested meaningfully in Eswatini’s healthcare system, and the two governments have cooperative agreements spanning agriculture, technology, and education.
But Eswatini’s loyalty comes at a cost. Chinese companies have largely displaced Taiwanese firms as investors in other African markets, and Eswatini’s manufacturers and traders operate in an ecosystem where the mainland Chinese economy is ever-present. The diplomatic tightrope that Eswatini walks — allied with Taipei while surrounded by Beijing’s friends — is becoming harder to navigate.
The Broader Message
For African governments, Tuesday’s incident carries a wider lesson: China’s One China policy is not an abstract diplomatic principle but an operational reality that can affect real decisions about who flies where and who meets whom. Any African nation that harbours even quiet doubts about its own One China commitment — or that might be tempted to explore informal ties with Taiwan — has just watched what the enforcement mechanism looks like in practice.
For Taiwan, the episode underscores the fragility of its remaining diplomatic relationships and the limits of goodwill as a shield against Chinese pressure. With only twelve countries still recognizing Taiwan globally, the loss of Eswatini — even rhetorically — would mark a devastating retreat. Beijing knows it. Taipei knows it. And Africa, increasingly, is learning the same lesson in real time.