2024-02-10
Reposted!
February 2, 2022
Until a few years ago, Lithuania pursued a pro-China foreign policy.
The following is an excerpt from a feature on Japan–Taiwan relations in the monthly magazine Seiron, released yesterday.
The feature opens with a contribution by Mina Mitsui, the Sankei Shimbun’s Paris bureau chief.
She is a true journalist.
Special Feature: Japan–Taiwan Relations—Now More Than Ever
Learning from Lithuania’s Turn toward Taiwan
Lithuania, one of the three Baltic states formerly incorporated into the Soviet Union, has adopted a pro-Taiwan policy and is confronting China head-on.
Last autumn, its decision to allow the establishment of a representative office bearing the name “Taiwan” brought intense pressure from China: “This violates the One China policy. Change the name.”
The United States and Europe have expressed their support for Lithuania, and this small country’s struggle has become a test of the democratic world’s willingness to stand up to authoritarian states.
What is happening in Lithuania, more than 6,000 kilometres from China?
I travelled there to find out.
A Domino Effect of Threats
Anyone who immediately pictures Lithuania on a map is unusually well versed in international affairs.
Its latitude is roughly that of the northernmost tip of Sakhalin.
It lies on the eastern edge of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Union (EU), bordering Belarus.
Its population of approximately 2.8 million is smaller than that of Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture.
I visited the capital, Vilnius, in late December of last year.
Even at midday, the light was as dim as late afternoon, and the wind, at minus five degrees Celsius, stung my cheeks.
Walking along snow-covered pavements and nearly slipping several times, I eventually saw the parliament building across a square.
The imposing concrete structure is a relic of the Cold War.
It once housed the Supreme Soviet of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic and was known as the “Soviet Palace.”
I had come to interview Matas Maldeikis, the member of parliament who chairs the parliamentary group on relations with China and Taiwan.
Maldeikis belongs to the Homeland Union, the centre-right party leading the governing coalition, and had just returned from Taiwan, where he headed a delegation of parliamentarians from the three Baltic states.
The visit came about after he invited lawmakers from Latvia and Estonia to join him.
The delegation comprised ten parliamentarians, including six from Lithuania’s governing and opposition parties.
Maldeikis is 41.
He has a warm, ready smile, but his eyes behind his round glasses are sharp.
Still visibly excited by the visit, he began by saying: “Supporting Taiwan is not simply a matter of sympathy for a small island facing Chinese intimidation. It is directly connected to our own national security.”
By “national security,” he did not mean that he expected China to fire missiles at Lithuania.
His point was that China and Russia were joining forces to threaten the democratic world.
As Russian President Vladimir Putin exerted military and political pressure on Ukraine and Eastern Europe, Xi Jinping’s government was putting pressure on Taiwan in apparent coordination.
“This is no mere coincidence,” Maldeikis declared.
For Lithuania, Russia has remained the greatest threat even since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
“During my visit to Taiwan, I held more than thirty meetings with President Tsai Ing-wen and senior government officials, hearing about the threats Taiwan faces.
“They described Chinese cyberattacks, the spread of disinformation, and military intimidation through incursions by Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone.
“I was struck by how closely Russia and China resemble one another in their methods of destabilising their democratic ‘neighbours.’”
Maldeikis warned of a “domino effect” arising from cooperation between China and Russia.
“The world today is divided between authoritarian states such as China and Russia and the democratic world.
“It is comparable to the earlier division of the world between the United States and the Soviet Union.
“If democracy collapses somewhere, the domino effect will bring pressure to bear on other regions.
“If China crushes Taiwan’s democracy, the consequences will inevitably reach small Eastern European democracies such as ours.
“China and Russia are working together to destabilise their neighbours while watching how the United States responds.
“It is essential for the democratic world to unite in helping Taiwan.”
To the west, Lithuania borders Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad.
To the east, the Belarusian border is only twenty kilometres from the parliament building.
On the day of the interview, Belarus was sending migrants from the Middle East towards Lithuania’s border and encouraging them to break through.
Though small, Lithuania is acutely sensitive to security issues.
Its troubled history helps explain why.
The medieval Grand Duchy of Lithuania flourished as one of Europe’s great powers, but the country was annexed by the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century.
It achieved its long-awaited independence towards the end of the First World War, only to be invaded by the Soviet Union some twenty years later.
Although now a NATO member, Lithuania reinstated conscription in 2015, reversing an earlier abolition in response to the growing Russian threat.
Regarding China, a 2019 Defence Ministry report warned that Chinese espionage inside the country was intensifying.
The report said China was seeking to turn this small country into a base for gathering classified NATO and EU information.
Then, last September, the ministry issued an unusual recommendation concerning Chinese smartphones: citizens should stop using them, and owners should dispose of them.
It warned that devices made by the Chinese manufacturer Xiaomi contained a function capable of detecting expressions such as “Long live Taiwan independence” and “Free Tibet,” and that the function could potentially be controlled remotely.
Lithuania’s pro-Taiwan policy also rests on anxiety about an American retreat from Europe.
The United States, NATO’s leading power, has shifted towards an emphasis on Asia to concentrate on strategic competition with China.
In response, France and Germany have increasingly favoured an independent European security policy, but for Lithuania, a division between the United States and Europe is a nightmare scenario.
By supporting Taiwan and arguing that “the threats from Russia and China are one,” Lithuania appears intent on preserving transatlantic unity.
Both of Maldeikis’s parents are economists and served as members of the European Parliament after Lithuania joined the EU.
His firm belief that his country’s fate depends on the transatlantic alliance was instilled in him from childhood.
The Anti-Communist Spirit
For many Japanese people, Lithuania brings to mind Chiune Sugihara, the diplomat who issued “visas for life” to Jewish refugees.
Sugihara took up his post at the Japanese consulate in Lithuania in 1939 and was forced to leave just a year later.
In 1940, the Soviet Union annexed Lithuania under the secret protocol to the German–Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.
During half a century of Soviet rule, Lithuanians were subjected to compulsory communist ideology and Russian-language education, while their national identity was trampled upon.
The humiliation of that experience remains engraved in the nation’s memory.
Taiwan actually has nine times Lithuania’s population and eleven times its gross domestic product.
Yet Lithuanians feel a strong affinity with a “small democracy” resisting the Communist Party, and this sentiment underpins their government’s pro-Taiwan policy.
Dovilė Šakalienė is a good example.
A member of a centre-left opposition party, she is a parliamentary rival of Maldeikis but an ally on Taiwan policy, and she joined the delegation.
She is 43.
A blonde Northern European woman with an ever-present smile, she becomes stern when the conversation turns to China.
“I grew up hearing my grandparents describe the terror of Soviet repression.
“What is frightening about communism is that it expands state power, crushes humanity, and seeks to eradicate those who resist.
“That is why we cannot simply stand by while the Chinese Communist Party intimidates Taiwan.”
Šakalienė’s grandfather refused to serve in the Red Army and was sent to Siberia for forced labour.
Her grandmother was also branded a dissident and deported to Siberia.
A sibling had made an unguarded criticism of the Soviet Union; someone informed on them, and she was arrested.
“I was eleven when the restoration of independence was declared.
“I will never forget my grandfather weeping like a child and saying, ‘It is like a dream. At last, my wish will come true.’”
Šakalienė studied in the United States during high school and experienced the atmosphere of a free society.
After graduating from university, she worked for a government-affiliated human rights organisation.
Since entering parliament, she has advocated a foreign policy centred on human rights.
When Lithuania’s parliament adopted a resolution last May calling for an investigation into genocide in China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, she was its proposer.
Ties with Tibet
Until a few years ago, Lithuania pursued a pro-China foreign policy.
It had participated annually in “17+1,” the framework for economic cooperation between China and seventeen Eastern European countries, since the first leaders’ meeting in Warsaw in 2012.
It also signed a memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative.
An incident in August 2019 marked the beginning of the end of this close relationship.
Konstantinas Andrijauskas, an associate professor at Vilnius University, explained: “The Chinese embassy disrupted a citizens’ gathering in support of democracy in Hong Kong. It came as a profound shock to the public.”
The incident took place in front of the parliament building in Vilnius.
Pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong were then intensifying, and Vilnius residents had gathered in the square carrying Hong Kong and Tibetan flags.
Suddenly, a group of more than a dozen Chinese people entered the gathering with red Chinese flags, shouting, “Hong Kong belongs to China forever.”
When startled participants tried to film them with smartphones, members of the group grabbed at them.
The scenes were broadcast on television nationwide.
The Chinese embassy initially denied involvement.
However, investigative reporting by a television station established that the Chinese ambassador to Lithuania had been near the scene.
It also emerged that a vehicle with diplomatic plates had brought Chinese flags and distributed them to members of the Chinese group.
Lithuania’s Foreign Ministry summoned the ambassador and lodged a direct protest.
Approximately 500 Chinese people live in Lithuania.
The use of an embassy’s organisational networks to interfere in another country closely resembled the practices of the former Soviet Union.
Another controversy erupted towards the end of that year.
A Chinese female tourist visiting Lithuania committed an act seen as trampling on the democracy movement, and footage circulated online.
At a memorial site west of Vilnius known as the Hill of Crosses, she found a cross about thirty centimetres tall bearing the words “Freedom for Hong Kong.”
Laughing and saying, “Hong Kong people, apparently,” she pulled it out and threw it away.
Outrage spread across Lithuania, with people calling the act unforgivable.
Police even opened an investigation to identify the woman.
The Hill of Crosses is regarded in Lithuania as a national sacred site.
It lies about 200 kilometres west of Vilnius.
After driving through broad stretches of open countryside, one suddenly encounters a darkened hill.
On approaching, one sees more than 100,000 crosses of every size crowded together.
The tradition is said to have begun in the nineteenth century, when people brought crosses to mourn those killed after uprisings against imperial Russia.
During the Soviet period, relatives of political prisoners deported to Siberia visited the site.
Soviet authorities repeatedly bulldozed it, but the silent resistance represented by the crosses continued.
It is a place imbued with the anguish of an oppressed people.
The Chinese woman’s act was seen as an insult to Lithuania as well as to Hong Kong.
Lithuania originally had few ties with Taiwan.
Taiwan’s representative office for the Baltic states, the Taipei Representative Office, was located in Latvia, and many Lithuanians did not even distinguish between Taiwan and Hong Kong.
With Tibet, however, Lithuania had nurtured a bond for thirty years as fellow peoples oppressed by great powers.
The connection began in 1990, when Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence from the Soviet Union.
The Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism’s spiritual leader, sent a message to independence leader Vytautas Landsbergis, later speaker of Lithuania’s parliament, encouraging “non-violent resistance.”
It was the first declaration of independence within the Soviet bloc, and initially no country recognised it.
The Dalai Lama had just received the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, and his message greatly encouraged Lithuanians, who felt isolated and without support.
In 1991, when recognition by the United States and Europe made independence a reality, the Dalai Lama visited the parliament building in Vilnius and praised the leaders of the independence movement.
Because of this historic friendship, Lithuania continued to receive the Dalai Lama even while pursuing a pro-China policy.
Vilnius even has a park commemorating support for Tibet.
As China intensified its repression or intimidation of Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, it was only natural that Lithuanian attitudes towards China should cool.
When I visited the Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius and spoke to its head, Eric Huang Chun-yao, he smiled and said: “I was surprised by how often people stopped me in the street to say, ‘Keep it up!’”
Landsbergis, the independence leader, now 89, had also visited the office to offer encouragement.
Huang has become a well-known figure in Lithuania.
Lithuania’s distancing from China also reflects disappointment with the benefits promised by the Belt and Road Initiative.
China accounts for only about one per cent of Lithuania’s exports.
These consist largely of wooden furniture and copper products.
It is hardly surprising that Taiwan’s high-tech industries, including semiconductors, should appear attractive.