On March 3, Lithuania, a small European country, announced that it would no longer participate in the Communist Party-led “17+1” cooperation mechanism for Central and Eastern European countries. The country’s Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said Lithuania “hardly” benefited from the 17+1, “not that our departure is the end. We should really think about what is an effective way to build relations with China.” A little earlier, on February 9, at a video summit of the 17+1 leaders hosted by Xi Jinping, Lithuania’s president and prime minister were absent, and only ministers attended.
Lithuania is not alone in saying “no” to the Chinese Communist Party, as several European countries are taking similar actions. In one particular case, the 17+1 leaders’ video summit on February 9 was attended by only low-level representatives from five other countries, in addition to Lithuania; one diplomat said, “China put a lot of pressure on us. One diplomat said, “China put a lot of pressure on us,” but they held up. The five countries are Estonia, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and Bulgaria. In response, the French broadcaster asked the Chinese Communist Party: Is this a “17+1” or a “17-6”?
Back to Lithuania. On February 17, the Lithuanian Prime Minister’s spokesman said that the Lithuanian government had banned Chinese company Tongfang Nuctech from supplying baggage scanning equipment to the country’s airports due to “national security concerns”. On the same day it announced its withdrawal from the 17+1, the Lithuanian Ministry of Economy and Innovation told Reuters that it would open a representative office in Taiwan this year to promote economic diplomacy with Asia; to this end, on March 23, the Lithuanian government proposed to the parliament to amend the civil service law to allow Lithuania to set up “economic representative offices” and “economic representative offices” in regions where it does not have diplomatic representation, such as Taiwan. To this end, on March 23, the Lithuanian government proposed to the Parliament to amend the civil service law to allow Lithuania to set up “economic representative offices” and send out commercial representatives in regions where there is no diplomatic representation, such as Taiwan.
Lithuania’s “face” is really strong. This former Soviet republic has a real understanding of the nature of the communist regime because of its historical pain, so it is no longer difficult for the Communist Party to fool it. The same is true of Estonia, a Baltic country with Lithuania.
On February 17, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service (Välisluureamet) published the report “International Security and Estonia 2021,” stating that “the implementation of the Chinese (Communist) foreign policy doctrine, or the creation of a ‘community of common destiny,’ will lead to a Beijing-led world of silence. Faced with growing confrontation with the West, the main goal of the Chinese (Communist) state is to create a split between the United States and Europe.”
The 82-page document ends with a nine-page description of “the increasing pressure from the Chinese (Communist) state.” The report highlights Beijing’s growing ability to conduct influence operations in the West through economic leverage, surveillance of Chinese citizens abroad and cultivation of local elites. The report also warns that the Communist Party leadership “has a clear goal of making the world dependent on Chinese technology,” citing 5G maker Huawei and the BeiDou navigation system. While the Chinese Communist Party does not pose a direct military threat to Estonia, throughout the 2010s Estonia has become increasingly wary of Beijing’s use of economic coercion for geopolitical purposes, its cyber espionage and its growing partnership with Russia. This year’s foreign intelligence report uses the harshest language yet.
And Latvia, one of the “Baltic Three,” explicitly identified the Chinese Communist Party as a “threat” for the first time in a forthcoming report by the Latvian National Security Agency, as early as Dec. 28, 2019, according to the Latvian state news agency. The report, which echoes the annual security report of the Lithuanian National Security Agency in February, unprecedentedly lists the Chinese Communist Party as a major security threat along with its traditional enemy Russia, and accuses the Chinese Communist Party of active espionage in Lithuania.
“The three Baltic states are highly wary of the Chinese Communist Party, and other countries in Central and Eastern Europe feel the same way. For example, according to a February Wall Street Journal report (“China Faces European Obstacles as Some Countries Heed U.S. Pressure”), many governments from the Baltic to the Adriatic have European countries are moving to ban Chinese companies from investing or contracting in their countries, as governments from the Baltics to the Adriatic have recently canceled tenders that Chinese state-owned companies were set to win.
Reports suggest the shift is happening mainly in smaller European countries. Romania and Lithuania are taking broad measures to exclude Chinese companies from certain public infrastructure projects; authorities in Slovenia, Croatia, the Czech Republic and Romania have suspended public tenders involving Chinese companies for nuclear power plants, highways, rail lines, security scanners and a shipping container terminal; and Greece is discussing whether to allow a Chinese shipping company to increase its majority stake in the country’s Greece is discussing whether to allow a Chinese shipping company to increase its majority stake in the country’s largest port.
Officials involved in the decision reportedly said the shifts were motivated by national security concerns and frustration with the performance of Chinese contractors. The canceled projects are part of the Communist Party’s attempt to pass the Belt and Road project, which has put some participating countries in trouble.
Indeed, the Belt and Road is a carefully designed trap by the Chinese Communist Party. In fact, before the Communist Party officially launched the Belt and Road project, Chinese companies had already suffered heavy losses in Europe. For example, in 2010, a Polish highway project led by state-owned China Overseas Engineering Corporation (COE) failed because COE lost all its money. China Overseas’ strategy was to win the bid at a low price and then increase the price during the construction process, but this conflicted with Polish law and resulted in a claim of RMB 1.751 billion for digging its own hole. However, this failed case did not make the Chinese Communist Party wake up and change its ways, instead, it repeated the same trick in the Belt and Road project, causing a lot of trouble and alerting many countries. In addition to the background of the reversal of the international situation caused by the CCP’s global expansion and war-wolf diplomacy, the above-mentioned scene reported by the Wall Street Journal has emerged in Europe.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been trying to lure the CEE countries economically, but the CCP’s limited economic strength and inherent economic shortcomings have led to the general disappointment of the 17+1 countries. For example, there is a serious imbalance between the import and export of Central and Eastern European countries to China, and although Xi Jinping proposed at the 17+1 summit that he plans to import more than $170 billion worth of goods from Central and Eastern European countries over the next five years, this is considered to be mostly a pie in the sky. For example, according to data from the Ministry of Commerce of the Communist Party of China (CPC), by the end of 2020, China’s cumulative industry-wide direct investment in 17 CEE countries was only $3.14 billion, while the cumulative investment in China by 17 CEE countries reached $1.72 billion during the same period. The expectations of CEE countries for large-scale investment by the CCP are bound to be disappointed.
Despite the good words of the Chinese Communist Party, the “17+1” is largely seen as an economic expansion of the Chinese Communist Party rather than a development opportunity for the CEE countries; therefore, the Chinese Communist Party’s smackdown at the “17+1” summit mentioned at the beginning of this article has its own origin. The economic coercion of the Chinese Communist Party will not be used at this time.
Once the Communist Party’s economic temptations are not very effective, the Communist Party’s infiltration and division of Europe will lose its main means. The 17 countries in Central and Eastern Europe, with the exception of Greece, are all former communist countries, which have been deeply affected by it. After the great changes, communism has become a street rat and has formed a fundamental ideological opposition to the CCP, which makes it difficult for the political cooperation between the two sides to develop much. This has been discussed in my article “The layout and predicament of the CCP in Central and Eastern Europe” more than three years ago, so I will not repeat it here.
It is for these reasons that some small and medium-sized European countries, unlike the large countries that are economically tied to the CCP (e.g., Germany), have stood up straight and said “no” to the CCP’s recent perverse actions, which also represents the general public opinion in Europe. One of the most striking examples is the visit of the Czech Speaker to Taiwan.
In the Czech Republic, the President of the Senate is second only to the President. Originally, Kubera, then president of the Czech Senate, was scheduled to visit Taiwan after the 2020 ROC presidential election. The Czech president and prime minister opposed the visit on the grounds that it would affect Sino-Czech relations, while the foreign minister made it clear that he had no intention of interfering and the Chinese Communist Party pressured him to prevent it. On May 20, 2020, the Czech Senate voted 50-1 to condemn the Chinese Communist Party’s pressure on then-Speaker Kubera to visit Taiwan, stating that a visit by a Czech congressman to Taiwan Three months later, Vestfold visited Taiwan for six days with a delegation of ninety people, including the mayor of Prague.
Although Czech President Miloš Zeman criticized Vestführ’s visit as a “childish provocation,” Vestführ’s visit received strong support, for example from the Czech Vice-President of the European Union Executive Committee, Vera Čolova; and on June 25 of that year, a delegation led by two MEPs and supported by the European Parliament’s On June 25 of that year, two MEPs, led by Keller, Chairman of the European Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group, U.S. Senator Rubio, and 68 multinational members of Congress from Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Canada, Australia, and others, signed a joint statement strongly supporting Vestfold’s visit to Taiwan.
Angered by the Chinese Communist Party, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who was visiting Europe at the time, said that “the Czech Senate President’s public provocation and the anti-China forces behind it should be made to pay a heavy price for their short-sighted behavior and political speculation. In response, the Czech Foreign Ministry summoned the Chinese Communist Party’s Ambassador to the Czech Republic, Zhang Jianmin, to express his strong opposition, while the German Foreign Minister warned Wang Yi to his face during the meeting that “threats do not work here [in Europe].”
The Czech Speaker’s visit to Taiwan is a stark expression of European public opinion and the policy preferences of some countries. In addition, another major event that has seen many European countries slap the Chinese Communist Party in the face is the signing of a 5G security agreement with the United States (the agreement is part of the U.S.-led “clean network” initiative). The countries that signed the agreement in 2020 are Bulgaria, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Greece, Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Estonia, Denmark and Latvia. Two G7 countries – Italy and the UK – have banned Huawei’s 5G rollout. although reservations remain, Germany and France, as well as the Netherlands, Switzerland, Spain and Portugal are expected to follow suit. In addition, on November 18, 2020, Polish authorities indicted a former Chinese executive of Huawei’s Polish representative office and a former Polish security service officer for espionage (both were arrested back in January 2019).
To sum up, from the Czech Speaker’s visit to Taiwan, to the signing of the 5G security agreement with the United States, to Lithuania’s announcement to withdraw from the 17+1, many European countries have hit the Chinese Communist Party in the face one after another. It seems that it is getting harder and harder for the CCP to make a living in the world.
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