VILNIUS, Lithuania — It was never a secret that China tightly controls what its people can read and write on their cellphones. But it came as a shock to officials in Lithuania when they discovered that a popular Chinese-made handset sold in the Baltic nation had a hidden though dormant feature: a censorship registry of 449 terms banned by the Chinese Communist Party.
Lithuania’s government swiftly advised officials using the phones to dump them, enraging China — and not for the first time. Lithuania has also embraced Taiwan, a vibrant democracy that Beijing regards as a renegade province, and pulled out of a Chinese-led regional forum that it scorned as divisive for the European Union.
Furious, Beijing has recalled its ambassador, halted trips by a Chinese cargo train into the country and made it nearly impossible for many Lithuanian exporters to sell their goods in China. Chinese state media has assailed Lithuania, mocked its diminutive size and accused it of being the “anti-China vanguard” in Europe.
In the battlefield of geopolitics, Lithuania versus China is hardly a fair fight — a tiny Baltic nation with fewer than 3 million people against a rising superpower with 1.4 billion. Lithuania’s military has no tanks or fighter jets, and its economy is 270 times smaller than China’s.
din0d0nut on October 1st, 2021 at 20:53 UTC »
I think the story would be very different if Lithuania wasn’t so isolated from China. As it stands the Baltic’s are part of the world least directly tied to trade and relations with China. It’s easy to denounce other countries when you have no skin in the game.
KakuBon on October 1st, 2021 at 12:26 UTC »
As much as we love a story of the little guy standing up to the big bad bully, action like this is typically not a geopolitically smart thing to partake. Unless, of course, the little guy has a bigger bully standing in support. In Lithuania's case, it is the US.
In recent years Lithuania is seeing increased cooperation with the US and the NATO, with the US increasing its deployment there in 2020. With the West's failure to influence Belarus in any meaningful way, this makes Lithuania the forward-most region to resist Russian influence outside of Northern Europe.
Challenging China feels like a political move to double-down on its position.
theoryofdoom on October 1st, 2021 at 03:08 UTC »
Submission Statement:
In this article, Andrew Higgins (Moscow Bureau Chief for the New York Times) describes Lithuania's multi-front resistance to Chinese economic and political influence, and its broader geopolitical significance. Higgins argues that Lithuania plays an outsized role in its resisting the rise of China and increasingly global influence of the Chinese Communist Party.
Lithuania's foreign policy is based, foremostly, on its values: democracy and the rule of law, however much easier it would be to simply capitulate to the CCP. In this way, Lithuania represents a moral guidepost for resistance to communism, totalitarianism and manifestations of its insidious influence. For example, Chinese-manufactured handsets sold in Lithuania had a dormant feature concealed from users --- "a censorship registry of 449 terms banned by the Chinese Communist Party" --- Lithuania's government advised those using the phones to dump them outright.
China was enraged. In the face of Beijing's regarding Taiwan as a renegade province, Lithuania embraced Taiwan with open arms, even entertaining the idea of informal diplomatic relations, prompting Beijing to recall its ambassador. China retaliated by interfering with trade, but Lithuania did not yield.
Antony Blinken (Biden Secretary of State) reaffirmed the United States' "ironclad U.S. support for Lithuania in the face of attempted coercion from the People’s Republic of China," in a recent diplomatic event between representatives of both countries.
No Paywall: https://archive.is/C2To2