Full support to Lithuania

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This is a translations of a blog post from my Finnish blog. Link here.

A diplomatic dispute between China and Lithuania seems to be brewing. Lithuania recently announced plans to open a representative office in Taiwan, while Taiwan is opening it's own office in Lithuania. For those who don't know, these offices act as de facto embassies due to Taiwan's interesting place in international politics.

On it's own this is nothing special. After all, Finland and Taiwan have a similar arrangement between them. It's the name of this representative office that is the problem: while Taiwan's representative office in Finland uses the name ”Taipei Representative Office”, the name for the office that is about to be opened in Lithuania uses the name "Taiwan". And since China considers Taiwan as it's own territory, even the name "Taiwan" in any official capacity is treated as a threat. 

Now China has actually recalled their ambassador to Lithuania and is demanding Lithuania do the same. Obviously this is an attempt at pressuring Lithuania, but it also gives Lithuania a chance to give China a massive slap in the face: since China is recalling their ambassador, shouldn't Lithuania just go all in and officially recognize Taiwan? That would make Lithuania the only EU country to recognize Taiwan.

Let's be realistic, this is extremely unlikely to actually happen. Ultimately China is just too important of a trading partner for any EU state to actually sever diplomatic ties with. That being said, Lithuania has been fairly active at resisting Chinese influence. Earlier this year Lithuania withdrew from the 17+1 forum, which is basically China's attempt at increasing it's influence in Europe. Lithuania also donated 20 000 doses of Covid vaccines, which Taiwan has had trouble procuring due to its international position.

It's somewhat embarrassing that a small country like Lithuania has taken such an active role in the fight against authoritarian regimes like China and Belarus. I seriously hope that rest of the EU can follow their example.

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