Taiwan's foreign ministry says South Africa has agreed to have further discussions about its demand for Taiwan's representative office to move from the administrative capital of Pretoria to nearby Johannesburg.
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00:00There's been a last-minute development in the diplomatic spat that's been brewing between Taiwan and South Africa.
00:06It's emerged that South Africa is now open to talks over its demand that Taiwan move its representative office out of Pretoria.
00:13Chris Gorin has been following developments and joins us from our newsroom here in Taipei.
00:18Chris, South Africa set today as the deadline for Taiwan to move the de facto embassy. Is that deadline still in place?
00:24Well, the South African Office of International Relations and Cooperation had previously said pretty unequivocally that Taiwan needed to move its liaison office from the city of Pretoria to the nearby city of Johannesburg.
00:40Now, I reached out to both the South African liaison office in Taipei and the Taiwan foreign ministry for a comment on this story and both declined to comment any further.
00:51But South Africa had previously set a deadline for today, the 30th of October, to make that move and Taiwan had refused to comply.
00:59So, what's new is Taiwan is now saying that South Africa is open to further discussions on the topic.
01:05What we don't know is what caused South Africa to change its stance on this issue and if these so-called discussions will actually allow Taiwan to keep its office where it is.
01:16Now, this all started about two weeks ago when it became publicly known that South Africa had made this request to Taiwan to move and change the name of its office.
01:26Currently, the liaison office is in the administrative capital of Pretoria, which is where South Africa's presidency is seated and where all of its foreign embassies are located.
01:36Now, they want Taiwan's office to move to the nearby city of Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city and just about a 45-minute drive away.
01:45They also want to change the name of the office from a liaison office to a trade office, which South Africa says more accurately reflects the relationship that it has with Taiwan.
01:58So, Chris, why is there so much controversy over the location and name of Taiwan's office there?
02:04Well, it all boils down to one word, China.
02:09China requires all countries with which it has diplomatic relations to maintain a one-China policy, which means they cannot also have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
02:18And that's also why Taiwan has unofficial relationships with almost every country in the world, including South Africa, who broke off its diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997.
02:30Now, most people are viewing this move by South Africa to placate China even further.
02:37After all, there haven't been any additional diplomatic disagreements between South Africa and Taiwan in recent times.
02:44But Taiwan has been through this before.
02:46Just a few years ago in 2017, another African country, Nigeria, asked Taiwan to move its liaison office from its capital city to a less sensitive city.
02:57And at that time, Taiwan actually complied.
02:59So its more hard-line stance with South Africa this time is a little bit of a change.
03:04Now, while South Africa had previously said that this deadline for today was non-negotiable, we'll find out later tonight just how hard that deadline really is.