Why is the Czech Republic targeting a Chinese diplomat and what does it have to do with Taiwan’s next vice-president?
- Taiwanese vice-president-elect Hsiao Bi-khim was reportedly tailed during her trip to Prague last month
- If true, the Chinese actions were not unreasonable, an analyst says
Focus Taiwan, the English news portal of Taiwan’s semi-official Central News Agency, reported on Sunday that Czech authorities were investigating a report that a Chinese diplomat was stopped by police while following Hsiao Bi-khim’s motorcade.
The authorities summoned Chinese ambassador Feng Biao and were considering listing the diplomat at the centre of the allegations as persona non grata, which could result in the diplomat’s expulsion from the Czech Republic.
Hsiao was in Prague to speak at a seminar.
A 150-person delegation led by the speaker of the lower chamber of the Czech parliament, Marketa Pekarova Adamova, went to Taipei in March last year and the Czech Republic and Taiwan host reciprocal economic and cultural offices.
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Lawmakers from Hsiao’s Democratic Progressive Party said the incident last month was an example of Beijing’s “Wolf Warrior diplomacy” targeting Taipei.
But Josef Gregory Mahoney, a politics and international relations professor at East China Normal University, said there was “nothing Wolf Warrior” about the diplomat’s actions.
“[They were] precisely what a Chinese diplomat should do,” he said.
“Assuming the allegations are true, it’s not unreasonable for China to keep tabs on the visit,” Mahoney said, adding that there had been no claims that the tracking was illegal or covert.
“Beijing views Taiwan as a renegade province and Hsiao belongs to a political party advocating independence. She is not in Prague to promote Chinese diplomacy but to undermine it. China should listen and follow.”
He said that by hosting Hsiao and floating a threat of expulsion for the Chinese diplomat, “the Czech Republic is placing itself in the vanguard of European anti-China policies, kowtowing to US pressures to pick a side”.
“The Czech Republic is a small country that depends disproportionately on the US for security and well-being, therefore, it is unsurprising that it is creating excuses for souring relations further,” Mahoney said.
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Andrew Korybko, from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, said Hsiao’s trip to Europe, which also included stops in Poland, Lithuania and Belgium, was intended to expand Taipei’s network of official and unofficial partners.
“The larger goal is to eventually court some of the US’ closest central and eastern European partners to recognise Taiwan or at least allow it to open up quasi-diplomatic offices there, like the representative one that opened in Lithuania in 2021,” Korybko said.
“Typically, whenever a country sends officials to Taiwan or receives officials from there, it is partially intended as a message to Beijing and always provokes a response.”
He said Washington’s European allies against Russia, such as the Czech Republic, were the “prime targets” of Taiwanese diplomacy.
“They are predisposed to believing recent reports that Beijing has allegedly ramped up its military and intelligence aid to Moscow over the past year, and they might then be amenable to expanding ties of some sort with Taipei on what they’d regard as a partially anti-Russian pretext.”
But such action ran the risk of economic retaliation from China, which could range from tourism to consumer boycotts, he added.
Beijing sees Taiwan as part of China to be reunited by force if necessary. Most countries, including the United States, do not recognise Taiwan as an independent state, but Washington is opposed to any attempt to take the self-governed island by force and is committed to supplying it with weapons.
