Palau, a tropical island nation in the Western Pacific, wants to attract a more diverse range of tourists and is looking to its diplomatic ally Taiwan for help.
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00:0043-year-old Velma Obak proudly shows visitors a side of her native Palau they may not be
00:06aware of.
00:08Most tourists to this tropical island nation come for the beaches.
00:13But cultural tours like Obak's are meant to show that there's more to these small islands
00:17in the Western Pacific than white sands and coral reefs.
00:21Usually, before, they were just interested in the water, diving and snorkelling.
00:28But when they started promoting the cultures, the culture tour, people are starting to get
00:34interested in more on the land tour, basically on the cultural tours, because we also offer
00:41and show them our cultures and traditions.
00:45With a population of only 18,000 people and no major industries, Palau's economy relies
00:50on the tens of thousands of tourists who come every year, most from China.
00:56But while Palau welcomes its Chinese visitors, it's concerned about what it says is Beijing's
01:01weaponisation of tourism when it wants to get the small nation in line with its policies,
01:06such as persuading Palau to stop recognising the sovereignty of fellow island nation Taiwan,
01:12a country Beijing claims as part of its territory.
01:16Palauans feel the large number of Chinese tourists here leave them at the mercy of Chinese
01:20politics.
01:22Because every country has good tourists.
01:27The challenge is how do we weed out the bad ones?
01:30And how do we control numbers?
01:33So it's really about balancing that component and really picking and choosing the types
01:39of tourists we want, which is people who care for the environment, people who enjoy solitude
01:46and are willing to pay a good penny to support indigenous and local tourism.
01:55In the search for more guests like this, Palau has been taking inspiration from Ally Taiwan,
02:00itself home to more than a dozen indigenous groups, and which has spent years developing
02:05indigenous tourism.
02:07It's just one area in which the two countries are growing closer, despite China's objections.
02:12And as part of a joint bid to boost tourism, they're publicly championing an ancient shared
02:18history.
02:20Here at Palau's National Museum, a new exhibit curated by Taiwan shows how the Pacific became
02:26populated over thousands of years with migration eastward starting from Taiwan.
02:32It highlights the cultural and linguistic similarities that still exist between Taiwan's
02:36indigenous people and Pacific Islanders.
02:41This is a treasured relationship for Taiwan, so often shunned internationally due to pressure
02:46from China.
02:48Taiwan's President Lai Ching-de chose this region for his first overseas trip since taking
02:52office, a tour which showed Taiwan as its own nation, distinct and different from China,
02:57with its own special connection to the Pacific.
03:00I can just say that the Taiwan government or Taiwan indigenous people can use our own
03:08languages and culture as a source of power to make friends or to maintain the relations
03:14with the Pacific allied countries.
03:22Many Palauans, like 84-year-old retired teacher Ximana Ramore, are glad about Taiwan's renewed
03:28interest in its Pacific heritage.
03:31She's finally found a partner in her decades-long effort to protect her country's language,
03:36creating a Palauan dictionary with funding and support from Taiwan.
03:40We lose our social interaction, we sort of lose the respect that we express to the elderly
03:49or the young people with language, we lose everything, we lose the culture.
03:55In their own different ways, both Palau and Taiwan are isolated.
03:59Hundreds of kilometres of Pacific Ocean separate Palau from its neighbours, and Taiwan is often
04:05denied space on the world stage because of China.
04:08Now, as these two island nations face up to the challenges of dealing with Beijing, they
04:14are finding common ground, and a new strength, in old connections.
04:19Alex Chen and Rick Lowatt in Karur, Palau, for Taiwan Plus.