Little Lithuania pokes China with Taiwan support and pays the price
CBC
With much of Russia's army massing next door in Belarus and fears of an attack on Ukraine, many Lithuanians could rightly be preoccupied with the thought that a terrible, new war in Europe could spill over into their country.
Except for months now, it's been China — not Russia — posing the greatest challenge to Lithuania's political and business decision makers as they've worked to resolve an unlikely confrontation that their government instigated.
The spat began over the naming of the new, de facto Taiwanese embassy in Lithuania's capital, Vilnius.
China considers Taiwan to be an integral part of its territory, whereas Taiwanese leaders assert their independence as a self-governed island. Given the sensitivity, most Western nations have opted to use a less politically sensitive name to describe trade and political missions, such as "Taipei" office, referring to the capital city.
But not Lithuania.
"We see the threats and dangers which arise out of the expansionist policies of Communist China," explained Mantas Adomėnas, Lithuania's Deputy Foreign Minister, during an interview in Vilnius.
"We wanted to curtail this … and support democracy in Taiwan."
And so the name "Taiwan" ended up being featured prominently in the signs, lettering and the official title of the trade office when it opened in November.
At the same time, Lithuania also pulled out of a group known as "17 +1," established by China in 2012 to help open up Eastern Europe to Chinese businesses.
Lithuanian officials told CBC News they expected reprisals, but the scale of China's wrath caught them off guard.
Within days, Lithuania pulled its diplomats out of Beijing after China downgraded its embassy. Virtually all of the country's exports to China — from lumber to beer to high-tech lasers — were cut off, up to $400 million US (over 500 million Cdn) of business in total.
Unique, and perhaps even unprecedented, was the mechanism by which Chinese officials were able to throttle Lithuania's trade.
They simply removed the country's name from China's customs register.
"We have been erased," said Adomėnas. "Anyone who tried to declare cargo coming from Lithuania would simply not find this country on the database."
As Vladimir Putin and his large entourage touch down Thursday in Beijing for a two-day state visit, there were be plenty of public overtures about cooperation, but with China facing increasing pressure from the U.S. over its trade relationship with Russia, China's President Xi Jinping will have to figure out how far the country is willing to go to prop up what was once described as a "no-limits" partnership.
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