SAN JOSE, Costa Rica—A high-level delegation of Chinese Communist Party officials began a visit to Costa Rica on Tuesday with a flurry of meetings and press conferences. The Chinese diplomats, led by Vice Premier of Agriculture Hui Liangyu, met with the president and vice president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias and Laura Chinchilla, to discuss various aspects of the newly formalized relationship between the two nations.
Costa Rica had maintained diplomatic ties with Taiwan for over 60 years until the Chinese Communist Party, which has been courting various countries in Central America to break ties with Taiwan, wooed them away with promises of economic benefits.
Only 23 countries in the world still maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan, and 12 of them are in Latin America, the largest block of countries in the world that do not have formal ties with communist China. Costa Rica is the only country in Central America to have officially broken with Taiwan and established ties with mainland China.
The Chinese group first met with members of the Costa Rican Legislative Assembly and its president, Dr. Francisco Antonio Pacheco. A second meeting, at the Presidential House, was overseen by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, who has been criticized for formalizing relations with the Chinese Communist regime, whose human rights abuses are seen as contradictory to his values as a Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
The National Bank of Costa Rica and China Development Bank also held a press conference in the governmental foreign relations headquarters, signing a new finance agreement. According to reports, China is offering to buy some of Costa Rica´s debt.
China's promises of a new national stadium and ¨gifts¨ of aid for flood victims are widely cited as the key incentives in winning over Costa Rica.
Although outspoken concerns over human rights have been few, there has been some opposition to the new relationship.
According to firsthand accounts from local media, a group of 200 protesters marched from La Sabana Park in San Jose toward the Chinese Embassy last month in protest of the Chinese Communist Party´s human rights record and the persecution of Tibetans.
The protesters found all the streets surrounding the embassy blocked off and a contingency of police in place.
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