A Baltic Country The Size Of West Virginia Is Changing Europe’s Relationship With China

LTC Eugene Chu
..."A Lithuanian Model
Increasingly, China’s bid to keep Lithuania in line seems set to backfire, inspiring more resistance in Europe and elsewhere.

Konstantinas Andrijauskas teaches at Vilnius University, a centuries-old hub of Lithuanian patriotism steps away from the country’s presidential palace. He feels pretty good these days about his nation’s approach to China.

“Chinese economic pressure has not produced the dire results that pessimists expected,” Andrijauskas told HuffPost, noting the apparent failure so far of the secondary sanctions that Beijing tried to apply on Lithuania via multinational companies and other European states. Instead, “China is trapped. Its image is being damaged; it is losing its soft power in the entire region.”

The U.S. Export-Import Bank’s massive credit was a coup for Lithuania that surprised even other parts of the Biden administration. And while Taiwanese backing for Vilnius took longer to materialize, last month’s announcements addressed the biggest Lithuanian priorities — semiconductors and lasers — and hinted at more good news to come. The day Taiwan unveiled those plans, Lithuania inaugurated its Taipei office.

Taiwan’s new funds to invest in Lithuania and its neighbors are “unprecedented” because Taipei has previously only used such programs to jumpstart its economy, Huang of the Taiwanese office in Vilnius told HuffPost.

Neliupšienė, the Lithuanian deputy foreign minister, said her government is courting a range of other Asian markets to diversify the Lithuanian economy and become less reliant on China. Taiwan can help, Huang noted: It’s a major trade partner for wealthy Japan and rising powers like Vietnam.

The strategy is almost exactly what many other Europeans wary of China want.

Charlie Weimers, a Swedish member of the European Parliament, called Lithuania’s acceptance of the Taiwanese office a “bold move.” He designed a bill last year that urged European countries to upgrade their relations with Taiwan. It won so much support across the legislature’s partisan divides that it passed with what Weimers described as “a North Korean majority.”

The goal is not to spark a conflict by breaking conventions around Taiwanese independence, Weimers said, but to become more confident about expressing sovereignty and support for human rights — and less afraid of Chinese wrath.

“If the Taiwanese can live with the status quo… so can we, and we should be practical,” he continued. He hopes that European “countries who struck deals with China can be reassured that this is a long-term effort in which we will find new partners to work with.”

“We will not just close trade routes,” Weimers said. “We will redirect them.”

Just as China tried to turn other Europeans against Lithuania, the Chinese ambassador to the E.U. pushed European officials to scuttle the Taiwan resolution, Weimers told HuffPost. And Beijing has previously put sanctions on European legislators for raising other sensitive issues like China’s crackdown on its Muslim minorities.

Huang said his country recognizes the risk of opening offices abroad and is cautious about doing so. Last month, Taiwanese voters delivered a big win to their country’s more China-friendly political party in local elections, and most Taiwan watchers believe the population is not interested in a major confrontation with Beijing.

Yet Lithuania also saw a significant vindication for its approach this year when its neighbors Latvia and Estonia — the other Baltic nations often seen as its closest parallels — withdrew from the Chinese-led dialogue for European countries.

The distinction makes sense to Mačikėnaitė, the Lithuanian professor. She told HuffPost it is important to differentiate between two issues in analyzing the Lithuania-China kerfuffle: Firstly, Lithuania’s willingness to pull away from China, and secondly, how close the country will truly become with Taiwan."...

Go Lithuania!!