View of Vilnius, capital of Lithuania Photo: VCG

Although China was forced to downgrade diplomatic relations with Lithuania after the Baltic state challenged China’s sovereignty over Taiwan and abandoned the internationally recognized one-China principle that the country’s previous governments upheld, the current Lithuanian government remains hostile and even more provocative, with Chinese analysts claiming that such extreme and stupid anti-China policies could push the Baltic state to act more like a ‘troublemaker’ and isolate itself In the region.

Chinese experts have said anti-Chinese politicians in Lithuania overestimate themselves and find themselves in a bind. Many cases have already proven that governments that risk their national interests to please and flatter the United States by unreasonably defying China or Russia will end up being cheated and abandoned by Washington, they said.

When Washington decides to ease tensions with Beijing or Moscow, the stupid and extreme gestures of these reckless governments to show their loyalty to Washington can only lead to disappointment, and Lithuania is embarking on this tragic path, the officials noted. observers.

Arrogance and ignorance

During a visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said he spoke to senior US officials about Lithuania’s efforts to reduce its dependence on China for supplies and called for efforts longer term to help other countries facing pressure, according to AFP on Wednesday, and even claimed that his country “is showing the world a way to resist growing pressure from China by diversifying supply chains and by uniting with other democracies “.

“I think Lithuania’s biggest lesson is that economic coercion does not necessarily mean the country has to move away from independent foreign policy decisions,” Landsbergis told AFP.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded to the remarks on Thursday: The United States? “

Analysts said Landsbergis was traveling to the United States to seek rewards as his government demonstrated loyalty in defying China, and without these rewards these opportunistic Lithuanian politicians would not dare to challenge China with such an unreasonable stance. , reckless and absurd.

Lithuania will sign a $ 600 million export credit deal with the US Import-Export Bank, Lithuanian Economy Minister Ausrine Armonaite told Reuters on November 19.

Zhao said on Thursday that “this just proves that behind Lithuania’s provocative gesture, there is a master puppeteer who conducts the whole show with premeditation,” and “I want to stress that Lithuania’s deal – to exchange credits export from the United States with infringement of the sovereignty of China – is extremely immoral and dangerous. ”

Whatever rewards the United States promises, these rewards could only benefit the United States and a few Lithuanian politicians or could even be lip service, and have nothing to do with the majority of Lithuanians, who will pay the price for their government’s foreign stupidity. politics, Cui Hongjian, director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday.

Lithuanian politicians are now trying to expand their anti-China team by including more politicians in the region with similar positions to provoke China more over the Taiwan issue. According to the Taiwanese authorities on Wednesday, “a dozen Lithuanian, Estonian and Latvian parliamentarians will go to Taipei” in early December while meeting with “senior officials” from Taiwan.

Sun Keqin, a researcher at the Chinese Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Thursday that these Lithuanian politicians want to prove that they are not alone and are testing to what extent Europe and the United States will continue to support them.

“Lithuania is a small country with very little international media coverage in the past, but its provocation on the Taiwan issue has suddenly put the Baltic state in the international spotlight” and these politicians want to maximize their political interests against this kind of dangerous movement, Sun noted.

Myopic “pawns”

The three Baltic states actually have very limited trade relations with China, and this is the main reason they dare to challenge China, but this short-sightedness could ruin the opportunity for their countries to get meaningful aid from China. China to stimulate economic development, Cui noted.

“The United States and some other big western countries are very hypocritical. On the one hand, they do not want to abandon the Chinese market and hesitate to provoke China on subjects like the question of Taiwan; on the other hand, they encourage small countries like Lithuania to recklessly provoke China, so that these small countries lose the Chinese market and big companies in Western countries take their shares, “Cui said.

Many countries have already learned hypocrisy and selfishness from the United States. For example, the former Aquino administration in the Philippines recklessly defied China on the South China Sea issue to serve America’s “backbone to Asia” strategy and paid a heavy economic price; Georgia challenged Russia in 2008, but received no help from the West when Russia launched military retaliation; Canada illegally detained the chief financial officer of Chinese IT giant Huawei, Meng Wanzhou, in December 2018, at the behest of the United States, and suffered huge losses due to damage to its relationship with China, said Chinese analysts.

All of these cases prove again and again that the United States will only use its allies or small countries to serve their “big power competition” with China and Russia, but will never offer significant support or at least pay. for the losses of their supporters. caused by blindly serving the United States’ “great power competition strategy”, the experts noted.

Strong China-CEEC ties

As die-hard anti-China Lithuanian politicians try to expand their “anti-China team” among the Baltic states, China is also making diplomatic efforts to strengthen win-win cooperation with Central and Eastern European countries. (CEEC), in order to prevent the Lithuanian madness to act to pollute the friendly relations between China and the CEECs.

On Monday, Deputy Foreign Minister and Secretary General of the Secretariat for Cooperation between China and the Countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEEC) Deng Li held a collective meeting with diplomatic envoys and representatives in China from 14 countries including Albania, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Poland, Hungary and Romania, according to the website of the Chinese foreign ministry.

During the meeting, the CEEC diplomatic envoys expressed their appreciation for the fruitful results of the China-CEEC cooperation and believe that this cooperation is an important part and a useful complement of the China-EU relations.

All sides exchanged views during the meeting on how to jointly promote China-CEEC cooperation to achieve more pragmatic results and make new contributions to the development of China-CEEC relations and China-CEEC relations. EU.

Experts said Lithuania would find itself isolated in the long run if it continued its stupid anti-China policies while all of its neighbors continually benefited from pragmatic cooperation and exchanges with China.

The mistake made by some countries like Lithuania should not have an impact on the wider map of China-Europe cooperation, Cui stressed, noting that “we cannot let mouse dung ruin the whole pot of The retaliation against Lithuania seems to have had some effect, and we must let other European countries see the prospects for cooperation with China. “