But the Taiwan government's subsequent inaction on human rights issues in Africa and elsewhere speaks louder than Chen's and Tien's words. Only one politician -- lawmaker Parris Chang, a member of Chen Shui-bian's Democratic Progressive Party -- expressed doubts as to the wisdom of welcoming Charles Taylor, a man Richard Holbrooke of the United States described as "West Africa's Slobadan Milosevic."

"A person is judged by the company he keeps," Chang was quoted by the Taipei Times as saying.

The same report quoted Ko Yu-jane of the Taiwan Association for Human Rights as lamenting: "It is deplorable that Chen failed to press his concerns about reported human rights violations in the ally country."

The Liberian President has been accused by the UN of meddling in Sierra Leone's civil war and illicitly trading gems for arms. Carl Davies, a Sierra Leone citizen living and working in Taiwan, told me that he acknowledges that Beijing's diplomatic blockade makes it difficult for Taipei to establish normal relations with other countries. But he added: "I find it contemptible that more people have not questioned the nature of the ROC's relationship with Charles Taylor's government."

Taiwan's government and people are under no illusions: What friends they have have been bought and must be paid off again and again. Beijing counters Taipei's largesse by offering aid packages of its own and sometimes succeeds in prying countries away from Taiwan.

In return for the aid it channels to its diplomatic allies -- almost all of which are small, poor nations in Africa, Central America and the Pacific -- Taipei receives backing for its efforts to regain a seat in the United Nations or get observer status at the World Health Organization. (Mainland China consistently blocks its membership bids for both bodies.)

In addition to Liberia, in Africa, the ROC has formal diplomatic relations with Senegal, Gambia, Burkina Faso, Chad, Malawi, Swaziland, and Sao Tome.

Considering that the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome & Principe maintains just six diplomatic missions in foreign countries, that apart from the ambassador and his family no Sao Tome citizens are in the ROC, and that not one Taiwanese company has invested in Africa's smallest nation (population 150,000, land area 1,001 square kilometers), it might seem odd that a cash-strapped country has sent an experienced diplomat and broadcaster (a stint at the United Nations, then 10-plus years working for Voice of America), his wife and three children halfway around the world to open an embassy. The stationing in Taipei of Ovidio M. Pequeno is, of course, a quid pro quo for the aid Sao Tome receives from Taiwan. According to the ambassador, this amounts to US$20 million to US$30 million per year.

Much of Taiwan's foreign aid budget is spent on medical and agricultural missions dispatched to its allies. Many Taiwanese had never heard of Gambia until earlier this year, when a Chinese-language newspaper serialized the story of a young Gambian man who believed his biological father was a Taiwanese agricultural adviser. A Taipei-based NGO estimated that Taiwanese aid workers have fathered and abandoned perhaps 400 to 500 children in Africa and Central America.

Some Africans nevertheless believe that Taiwan's rapid transformation from a poor, agricultural ex-colony of Japan to a democratic, high-tech industrial society could serve as a model for developing nations.

Paul LeJoy, a Cameroonian who spent eight years in the ROC working as an English teacher and technical writer, and drew on his experiences for two books, Black in Taiwan and Ten Reasons Why I've Enjoyed Taiwan, told me: "To an African, Taipei can be a great source of inspiration and hope because only a few years ago this grand, buzzling metropolis...was millions of light years behind advanced capitals like London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. It shows that the human spirit is endowed with immense capacity to perform immeasurable wonders. All it takes is visionary men and women."

A white woman from Johannesburg was equally upbeat a month after her arrival: "My first impressions have been of an abundance of people, noise and plastic -- and a remarkable lack of crime and social malcontent compared with South Africa."

According to Yohannie Mlombe, one of three Malawian doctors receiving specialist training in a major hospital in the Taipei area, the ROC has "good infrastructure, and not so many depressing sights of human misery." But in one e-mail he bemoaned "a high degree of xenophobia and discrimination, particularly against people of African origin, especially if they are not from the USA."

Taiwan's links with Africa go back more than 350 years, when African slaves and sailors passed through a Dutch trading outpost in the southern part of the island. But visiting Africans -- black or white -- are often assumed to be Americans.

Not every African is convinced that Taiwan's help is worth having. Mlombe said that the surgical training he was being given (at Taiwan's expense) was "useless, because Taiwan is not ready to handle foreign medical graduates. Their regulations and procedures in this regard are vague and their medicine can be favorably compared to their driving." (Taiwan's roads, it should be noted, are anarchic, dangerous places.)

Around the time he told me this, the leader of the ROC medical mission in Malawi was accused of gross negligence by one of his former colleagues. A Taiwanese obstetrician who had been fired from the mission alleged that over a period of two months, 17 patients died in the operating room supervised by the mission leader at Mazuzu, an ROC-funded hospital. During the same period, only one died in the other operating room directed by the obstetrician. The mission leader's malpractice may even had caused the death of George Claves, Malawi's minister for the disabled, the obstetrician said. Coincidentally, these claims were aired just as former Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui was preparing to travel to Japan to receive medical treatment. China's leaders thought he had no right to travel abroad, while some in Taiwan argued that the ROC's standard of medical care made the trip unnecessary. After days of delay, Tokyo issued a visa to Lee -- without saying if it was done for medical reasons, or to uphold the ex-president's human rights.