The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Tuesday issued a statement lambasting Lithuania over its decision to allow Taiwan to open a representative office under its own name. The ministry has recalled Chinese Ambassador Shen Zhifei (申知非) and demanded that Diana Mickeviciene, Lithuania’s envoy to China, leave Beijing.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regularly dresses down foreign governments for behavior it regards as inappropriate, but only on very rare occasions does it withdraw ambassadors.
Hu Xijin (胡錫進), editor-in-chief of the CCP-backed Global Times, called Lithuania “a crazy, tiny country full of geopolitical fears,” and offered a veiled threat: “It is rare to see small countries like Lithuania specifically seek to worsen relations with major powers.”
The statement said that Lithuania’s move was in direct contravention of the CCP’s “one China” principle. It also included a message for Taipei: “We also warn the Taiwan authorities that ‘Taiwan independence’ is a dead end and any attempt at separatist activities in the international arena is doomed to fail.”
Lithuania’s decision has clearly touched a nerve in Beijing, not for opening a representative office, but because it is to be called the “Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania,” using the name “Taiwan,” instead of the more conventional “Taipei” employed in other countries that have formal diplomatic ties with China — as Lithuania does.
This warming of ties between Taiwan and Lithuania has been an ongoing process.
In April last year, about 200 Lithuanian politicians and public figures wrote an open letter to Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda, urging him to support Taiwan’s bid to join the WHO. Nauseda did not act, but his foreign minister openly supported Taiwan’s participation in the World Health Assembly as an observer.
On June 22, Lithuania promised to donate 20,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses to Taiwan.
The donation of vaccines directly to Taipei, without consulting Beijing first, is an implicit acknowledgement that Taiwan is not within China’s jurisdiction. The proposed use of the word “Taiwanese” in the title of the nation’s representative office in Lithuania is a more explicit break with Beijing’s “one China” principle.
Vilnius could have predicted Beijing’s angry response, but has concluded that the economic advantages of staying in China’s good books are not worth the constraints on its policymaking. Recent attempts to capitalize on access to the Chinese market have been disappointing, leading it to withdraw from the 17+1 cooperation mechanism in May.
Low trade volumes aside, non-democratic regimes are less predictable, making doing business with them more problematic. This is certainly the case with the CCP, as Australia and Canada will attest.
Lithuania’s case involves another element. Its own experience with the former Soviet Union has left it with little taste for a communist world power pushing around smaller states that simply want to live by their own standards and values.
Lithuania’s decision to allow the use of the word “Taiwanese” is audacious and courageous, and the symbolic significance cannot be underestimated. It would not have been lost on Taipei or Vilnius, and it was certainly not lost on Beijing.
Most importantly, it will not be lost on other European states, which are becoming increasingly wary of the CCP’s coercive diplomacy.
Lithuania is a small country, one that China’s state propaganda has tried to belittle by calling it a “crazy, tiny country.” Why has Vilnius’ move angered the CCP so much? The answer is that other nations will be watching carefully how the situation develops, and how Beijing will react.
Allowing this “crazy, tiny country” to get away with such an audacious move is as damaging to the enforcement of the “one China” principle as allowing a major power to lead the way.
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