by Giulio Meotti
Niall Ferguson had explained that, with the fall of Hong Kong, Taiwan would be the heart of the confrontation between the West and China. All the great centers of cultural, political, religious and media power of the West are capitulating over China: film studios, Western universities, the Vatican, the WHO … There is a tiny European country in trouble for defending “Maginot Island”, the Taiwanese nationalist outpost in the heart of Red China.
In the center of Vilnius, on the 16th floor of a building, there is a small diplomatic office which has become the epicenter of a major geopolitical dispute that threatens to disrupt the European Union’s relations with China. It doesn’t look very prestigious from the outside. But this is Taiwan’s diplomatic seat in Lithuania, the first de facto embassy in Europe to bear the name “Taiwan”, just three kilometers from the much larger Chinese embassy. Vytautas Landsbergis, one of the “founding fathers” of Lithuanian democracy, aged 89, but still hugely influential in the country’s ruling conservative party, spoke on the day of inauguration, comparing Lithuania’s struggle for independence to that of Taiwan.
China immediately threatened to hand the small European state into the “trash bin of history” after challenging Beijing by allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius. Lithuania, which has a population of 3 million, has broken with its European neighbors by formally recognizing Taiwan, which opened its office in Vilnius in November. Only 15 countries in the world have a formal diplomatic alliance due to the boycott and pressure from China.
The Lithuanians had to evacuate their embassy in Beijing. It is not the first time. As early as 2000 there was a diplomatic incident when a conference on the crimes of communism was organized during the Chinese visit to Vilnius.
Not only is Lithuania paying a heavy economic price for its decision. Total blockade of Lithuanian goods from entering China. Beijing is already boycotting even those European countries that use Lithuanian components in their industrial production. Industrial and trade organizations told Politico that the Chinese embargo is now affecting manufactured goods from other EU countries, such as France, Germany and Sweden, which depend on Lithuanian supply chains.
“With fewer than three million people, little Lithuania poses no threat to China,” writes the Wall Street Journal. “But you wouldn’t tell from how Beijing is behaving.” We have already seen this movie. When Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison called for an international investigation into the origins of Covid-19, China imposed tariffs on Australian exports. Since China accounted for a high percentage of Australian exports, people wondered if Canberra would raise the white flag. The Australians didn’t give in, to their great credit .
Europe did not respond as well as the Australians.
“It’s like the classic Chinese saying: ‘Kill a chicken to scare the monkey,'” said a senior EU diplomat in China. “Beijing is sending the message that anyone who follows Lithuania’s example, daring to oppose it, will face serious consequences. And such a message is best tested on a smaller country.”
When a children’s book published in Germany claimed the coronavirus came from China, the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese companies in Germany launched a protest campaign. A Corona Rainbow for Anna and Moritz, the title of the book, wanted to help children understand the radically different world they found themselves in following the pandemic. In the illustrated book, the children’s father says: “The virus comes from China and from there it spread all over the world.” On social media, the Chinese in Germany accused the book of “spreading racism among children in Germany.” Then the Chinese consulate in Hamburg, which “presented solemn protests against the publisher”. The threats worked. And the book was withdrawn.
Europe thinks that economic relations with China cannot be compromised by the principled positions of a Baltic state. The European Union has in fact raised the white flag for now. “The European Union has failed to protect Greece from Turkey’s attempt to drill for gas: it was the French who acted, with warships and planes,” writes Edward Luttwak. “Now the EU fails to protect the Lithuania from Chinese coercion regarding its defense of the vals gold of the EU. Unless this changes, the EU is over ”.
A day after Lithuania decided to withdraw all its diplomats from Beijing, the 27 EU leaders gathered in Brussels spent just three minutes on the unprecedented confrontation which, writes Politico, “threatens to lay bare how little space there is little maneuver Europe has to undertake commercial actions to defend political principles ”.
When a single European country comes under attack, Brussels capitulates. It did not respond to Turkish threats at Greece’s maritime borders. It let Poland alone face Belarus’s “hybrid war” with migrants on its border (it is no coincidence that Lithuania has built a wall on the border with Belarus to repel the onslaught of migrants). Italy has for years been abandoned to its fate in the face of migratory waves. And now little Lithuania.
NATO, to which the Baltic country belongs, is also silent, perhaps because it is too worried by Ukraine, which is not part of the Atlantic Alliance and it is not clear why it should join.
The European intellectual class is silent. Nobody writes appeals “we are all Lithuanians”.
Milan Kundera explained that Czechoslovakia was only a “small country” that was in danger of being annihilated. For this reason, the countries of Eastern Europe today, says the Wall Street Journal, are aligning themselves with Taiwan. “We know very well from our history what it’s like to live with an older brother behind us,” said Milos Vystrcil, the president of the Czech Senate.
To Beijing, the Lithuanians have responded as Brussels should have done, that what remains of communism will end up in the trash bin of history.