Zdenek Hrib had been Prague’s mayor for little more than a month when he went face-to-face with the Czech capital’s complex entanglement with China.
Hosting a meeting with foreign diplomats in the city, Hrib was asked by the Chinese ambassador to expel their Taiwanese counterpart from the gathering in deference to Beijing’s “one China” principle.
Given Chinese investments in the Czech Republic — including the acquisition of soccer club Slavia Prague, a major brewery and a stake in a private TV station — the fledgling mayor could have easily agreed.
Photo: Screen grab from Facebook
The Prague City Council had, under his predecessor, signed a twin cities agreement with Beijing that explicitly recognized the “one China” principle.
Instead, Hrib refused and the Taiwanese diplomat stayed.
The episode was a rare case of a local politician defying the might of a global superpower while making a principled stand against a national government policy that has promoted Chinese ties.
Hrib’s conduct has invited comparison with former Gdansk mayor Pawel Adamowicz, after whom he renamed a Prague street following Adamowicz’s murder in January.
Adamowicz offered his city as a haven for refugees and adopted liberal positions at odds with the policies of Poland’s conservative Law and Justice Party government.
Hrib has since gone further, demanding that Beijing officials drop the clause stating Prague’s support for the “one China” principle in the 2016 deal and threatening to scrap the arrangement if they refuse.
“This article is a one-sided declaration that Prague agrees with and respects the ‘one China’ principle and such a statement has no place in the sister cities agreement,” Hrib said in an interview in Prague’s new town hall, close to the city’s historic tourist district, which has drawn an increasing number of visitors from China.
“The ‘one China’ principle is a complicated matter of foreign politics between two countries, but we are solving our sister cities relationship on the level of two capital cities,” he added.
Hrib, a 38-year-old doctor who spent a medical training internship in Taiwan, is challenging Czech President Milos Zeman, who has visited China several times, installed a Chinese adviser at his office in Prague Castle and declared that he wanted to learn “how to stabilize society” from China’s communist rulers.
The dispute has catapulted unassuming Hrib to household name status in Czech politics, helped by Prague’s position as an international cultural draw and its outsize share of national resources.
Hrib’s rise from obscurity is striking because Czech mayors are not directly elected.
He became mayor of a coalition administration after his Czech Pirate Party, a liberal group with roots in civil society, finished second in municipal elections in October last year.
Hrib has said that he is merely adopting the policy of his party and its two coalition partners in taking decisions that are cooling Prague’s relations with Beijing.
In March, his administration restored the practice of flying the Tibetan flag from Prague’s town hall, reinstating a tradition begun in the era of the Czech Republic’s first post-communist president, Vaclav Havel, which was dropped by the previous city administration.
At the same time, in a move tailor-made to infuriate Beijing, Hrib hosted the visiting head of Tibet’s government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay.
An official visit to Taipei followed, during which Hrib criticized China for harvesting organs from political prisoners belonging to the Falun Gong movement.
Threats of retaliation came soon afterward.
A planned tour of China by the Prague Philharmonia in September is in jeopardy after it rebuffed Beijing’s demands to repudiate the mayor.
Orchestra spokeswoman Iva Nevoralova likened the request to the actions of Czechoslovakia’s former communist regime, which pressured artists to denounce Havel’s dissident Charter 77 movement as the price for being allowed to perform.
Speaking to the Guardian, Hrib questioned whether Prague’s arrangement with Beijing was a fair relationship and criticized China’s “social scoring” system for good citizenship.
He suggested that investment from Taiwan, with its Western-style democracy and record of technological innovation, offered greater benefit.
The mayor has won praise for restoring the Czech Republic’s image as a champion of human rights and self-determination at a time when its politics have been dominated by the populist messages of Zeman and Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, an anti-immigration billionaire.
“It is empowering to see that a mayor of Prague can have a principled position, despite large portions of the Czech political establishment being co-opted by the narratives spread by the totalitarian government of China,” said Jakub Janda, executive director of the European Values think tank, which monitors anti-Western influence in Czech politics and beyond.
Jiri Pehe, the director of New York University in Prague, said that Hrib was using the mayor’s office to reassert the values of Havel, who died in 2011.
“Everyone in this country knows that when you support Taiwan and Tibet, you’re saying exactly what Havel used to say,” Pehe said. “This was intentional on the part of the Pirate party as soon as he took over Prague. They are saying that the Czech Republic has a special history of fighting against communism and you should respect it.”
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The High Prosecutors’ Office yesterday withdrew an appeal against the acquittal of a former bank manager 22 years after his death, marking Taiwan’s first instance of prosecutors rendering posthumous justice to a wrongfully convicted defendant. Chu Ching-en (諸慶恩) — formerly a manager at the Taipei branch of BNP Paribas — was in 1999 accused by Weng Mao-chung (翁茂鍾), then-president of Chia Her Industrial Co, of forging a request for a fixed deposit of US$10 million by I-Hwa Industrial Co, a subsidiary of Chia Her, which was used as collateral. Chu was ruled not guilty in the first trial, but was found guilty
A wild live dugong was found in Taiwan for the first time in 88 years, after it was accidentally caught by a fisher’s net on Tuesday in Yilan County’s Fenniaolin (粉鳥林). This is the first sighting of the species in Taiwan since 1937, having already been considered “extinct” in the country and considered as “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. A fisher surnamed Chen (陳) went to Fenniaolin to collect the fish in his netting, but instead caught a 3m long, 500kg dugong. The fisher released the animal back into the wild, not realizing it was an endangered species at
DEADLOCK: As the commission is unable to forum a quorum to review license renewal applications, the channel operators are not at fault and can air past their license date The National Communications Commission (NCC) yesterday said that the Public Television Service (PTS) and 36 other television and radio broadcasters could continue airing, despite the commission’s inability to meet a quorum to review their license renewal applications. The licenses of PTS and the other channels are set to expire between this month and June. The National Communications Commission Organization Act (國家通訊傳播委員會組織法) stipulates that the commission must meet the mandated quorum of four to hold a valid meeting. The seven-member commission currently has only three commissioners. “We have informed the channel operators of the progress we have made in reviewing their license renewal applications, and
RSS