{"id":1258124,"date":"2022-01-31T11:23:00","date_gmt":"2022-01-31T16:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1258124"},"modified":"2022-01-31T11:23:07","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T16:23:07","slug":"the-little-country-that-stood-up-to-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-little-country-that-stood-up-to-china\/","title":{"rendered":"The Little Country That Stood Up To China"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">16<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-little-country-that-stood-up-to-china%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1258124&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks fluent English, yet there is one word he hasn\u2019t heard often enough to master: \u201cNo.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Party leader presides over a global Communist colossus that has continued growing stronger as political leaders in the United States \u2014 but for a four-year interregnum between Democratic administrations \u2014 have essentially embraced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theaustralian.com.au\/commentary\/biden-would-finish-what-obama-started-the-decline-of-us-power\/news-story\/c329ad5e720996b09040598bf17a8648\">managed decline<\/a>. China wields its economic, diplomatic, demographic, and military power to bully and cajole anyone who gets in its way \u2014 apparently with unflagging success. Google <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/a-google-executive-tried-to-protect-human-rights-in-china-he-now-says-google-pushed-him-out-for-it\">censors<\/a>&nbsp;search results at its command. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/youtube-blames-system-error-for-deleting-comments-critical-of-chinese-communist-party\">YouTube<\/a> blames the mass deletion of comments critical of the Chinese Communist Party on a mysterious \u201cerror.\u201d Hollywood edits both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/6-blockbuster-movies-hollywood-changed-to-appease-china\">forthcoming <em>and <\/em>decades-old blockbusters<\/a> in obedience to Chinese tastes. Even a tech billionaire like the part-owner of the NBA Golden State Warriors, Chamath Palihapitiya, is so subservient to Beijing that he makes excuses for its persecution of the nation\u2019s Uighur Muslims, saying the \u201cvery ugly truth\u201d is that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/news\/billionaire-nba-executive-claims-nobody-cares-about-the-uyghurs-america-has-no-moral-authority-over-china\">nobody cares<\/a> about what\u2019s happening to the Uighurs.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As a result, China could hardly believe its ears when the tiny, former Soviet nation of Lithuania defied its commands. In August, Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a de facto Embassy in the capital city of Vilnius, and allowed it to be called the&nbsp;Taiwanese Representative Office. While several nations allow the island to open offices under the name of its capital city, Taipei, none had allowed Taiwan to use its own name because that would violate Beijing\u2019s \u201cOne China\u201d policy, which considers the independent, free-market nation part of the People\u2019s Republic of China. Allowing Taiwan to open a diplomatic office shatters this illusion.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda&nbsp;said the name of the office \u201chad not been coordinated with me.\u201d Still, when Beijing demanded that Lithuania change its ways, Lithuania refused. Because Lithuania <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/world-europe-59879762\">supports<\/a> \u201cdemocracy and human rights as <a href=\"https:\/\/providencemag.com\/2018\/02\/universal-values-western-exceptionalism\/\">universal values<\/a>,\u201d its government \u201cstands firm to its decision to welcome the opening of the Taiwanese representative office.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Chinese Communists immediately began ratcheting up the pressure. China tried to reclassify the Lithuanian representatives\u2019 presence in Beijing in such a way as would strip them of diplomatic immunity, subjecting them to possible <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/china-presses-eu-over-taiwan-by-targeting-one-of-smallest-members-11639579784?mod=article_relatedinline\">arrest and detention<\/a>. \u201cEssentially the Chinese are saying, \u2018The security of your staff cannot be guaranteed until you, Lithuania, will bend your knees,\u2019\u201d said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS China Institute in London.<\/p>\n<p>China exerted its economic might to try to squeeze Lithuania. \u201cAs of last week, more than 1,000 containers bound for Lithuania were stuck, unable to leave China, and another 300 sent from Lithuania were blocked from entering,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wsj.com\/articles\/eu-takes-china-to-wto-over-lithuania-trade-restrictions-11643271938\">reported<\/a> the Wall Street Journal on January 27. The CCP then tried to enlist other countries, including the United States, to stop purchasing products made in Lithuania, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.capradio.org\/news\/npr\/story?storyid=1070856065\">according<\/a> to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The European Commission has also documented Chinese pressure tactics, <a href=\"https:\/\/ec.europa.eu\/commission\/presscorner\/detail\/en\/ip_22_627\">including<\/a> \u201ca refusal to clear Lithuanian goods through customs, rejection of import applications from Lithuania, and pressuring EU companies operating out of other EU Member States to remove Lithuanian inputs from their supply chains when exporting to China.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Chinese diplomats also tried to paint Lithuania\u2019s action as immoral, with diplomat Zhao Lijian <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/as-germany-sides-with-china-over-lithuania-china-sides-with-russia-over-ukraine\">saying<\/a> the CCP would like to \u201cremind the EU to tell right from wrong, and stay wary of Lithuania\u2019s attempts to take China-EU relations hostage\u201d \u2014 an Orwellian turn of phrase, to be sure. Only Germany seems to have listened. Sources <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/newsletter\/brussels-playbook\/west-specifies-russia-sanctions-can-scholz-lead-parliament-posts\/\">told<\/a> Politico that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had officers \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/opinion\/as-germany-sides-with-china-over-lithuania-china-sides-with-russia-over-ukraine\">calling<\/a> everyone who speaks German in the [European] Commission\u201d because, in the words of Politico, Scholz \u201cfeared the EU was becoming too aggressive in its defense of Lithuania against Beijing\u2019s economic coercion.\u201d (Score two for Orwell.)<\/p>\n<p>The pressure of a nation with 2.8 million citizens has put the Marxist nation of a billion people in the unusual position of not getting its way. \u201cThe Chinese Communist Party is so threatened by Lithuania\u2019s recent diplomatic recognition of Taiwan that they have pressured companies and other countries to cut ties with Lithuania. In retaliation against Vilnius, Beijing has put holds on or rejected completely imports from Lithuania,\u201d Amb. Andrew Bremberg,&nbsp;the president and CEO of the <a href=\"https:\/\/victimsofcommunism.org\/\">Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation<\/a>, told me. \u201cBeijing has once again shown the world that when a country takes an action that does not align with the CCP\u2019s interests, they will take extreme measures.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Why would Lithuania risk provoking the lethal wrath of the world\u2019s most populous despotic power? Lithuanian Foreign Minister&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/list\/politico-28-class-of-2022-ranking\/gabrielius-landsbergis\/\" data-external=\"yes\">Gabrielius Landsbergis<\/a>&nbsp;says Lithuania feels a \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.france24.com\/en\/live-news\/20211124-lithuania-shows-world-way-to-withstand-china-fm-says\">sense of kinship<\/a>\u201d with Taiwan.&nbsp;Both are small nations formerly held under the thumb of repressive Communist nations.<\/p>\n<p>Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1939, then by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944, then \u201cliberated\u201d by the USSR again in 1944. Lithuanian leaders declared they would re-establish their independent republic on March 11, 1990 \u2014 something intolerable even in a collapsing Soviet Union led by Mikhail Gorbachev. First, Moscow economically boycotted<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks fluent English, yet there is one word he hasn\u2019t heard often enough to master: \u201cNo.\u201d The Chinese Party leader presides over a global Communist colossus that has continued growing stronger as political leaders in the United States \u2014 but for a four-year interregnum between Democratic administrations \u2014 have essentially embraced &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2315279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1258124","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258124","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1258124"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1258124\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2315279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1258124"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1258124"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1258124"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}