Thursday, November 18, 2021
Taiwan office opened in Lithuania
China rages over “extremely egregious act”
It’s actually only a small act – but with huge symbolism: A representative of Taiwan opens in Lithuania and China reacts angrily. The Foreign Ministry railed that the “wrong decision” should be corrected immediately. The background is China’s territorial interests.
The Chinese government has sharply criticized the opening of a representative office for Taiwan under its own name in Lithuania. “There is only one China in the world and Taiwan is an inalienable part of Chinese territory,” the Foreign Ministry said in Beijing. The opening of an official representation abroad is an “extremely monstrous act”.
“We demand that the Lithuanian side corrects this wrong decision immediately,” said Beijing and threatened: “The Lithuanian side will have to answer for all the resulting consequences.”
Fearing Chinese reprisals, Taiwan commonly refers to its de facto embassies abroad as the “Taipei Mission”. Conversely, for example, Germany’s diplomatic mission in the Taiwanese capital Taipei is not officially an embassy, but is referred to as the “German Institute”. However, today, Thursday, Taipei announced that “Taiwan’s Representative Office” in Vilnius had “officially started operations”.
USA and EU stand behind Taiwan
After decades of pressure from Beijing, only 15 countries officially recognize Taiwan as a state. Recently, however, other Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic and Slovakia had moved closer to Taipei again despite China’s protests.
In the past few months, tensions between Beijing and Taipei had increased significantly again. Among other things, China flew several air force maneuvers over Taiwan. Beijing threatens to unite the democratically governed island with the communist mainland by force if necessary.
The protective power of the USA is behind the government in Taipei. US President Joe Biden recently spoke of an “obligation” on the part of the US to defend the island democratic republic in the event of a Chinese attack. Just a few days ago, at his first online summit with China’s head of state and party Xi Jinping, the Democrat warned of a confrontation between the world’s largest economies. During a visit to Taiwan earlier this month, a delegation from the European Parliament also assured the country of solidarity in the conflict with China.