Czechia defies Beijing: Strengthens Taiwan ties with sovereign, value-driven diplomacy

Key topics:Czechia resists China, deepening ties with Taiwan through trade and diplomacyChina pressures Czech leaders, who push back with visits and official exchangesSouth Africa's move against Taiwan contrasts with Czechia’s sovereign approach.Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ray Hartley and Greg Mills*.The Czech Republic has a one-China policy. “It’s our one-China policy,” says a Prague foreign ministry spokesperson, “not theirs,” referring to the People’s Republic of China.In practice, this means that Prague maintains an economic office in Taipei and vice versa, and does not kowtow to Beijing’s line on important matters, including its trade and political relationship with Taiwan and support for the cause of Tibet.In March last year, for example, Taiwanese Vice-President Hsiao Bi-khim led a three-day visit to Prague. Not only did the Czechs carry this out in spite of Chinese protests and diplomatic pressure, staff at Beijing’s embassy in Prague led an intelligence operation, including a plan of physical confrontation, against the visit, interference unprecedented on European soil and later confirmed by Czech military intelligence.There is a pattern developing here, of both the Czechs pushing back and Chinese retaliation.In 2018, the Czech National Cyber Agency issued an alert warning of the national security risks posed by China’s Huawei and ZTE. The alert threatened Huawei’s $8 billion 5G network expansion approved by President Miloš Zeman, Pavel’s pro-Beijing predecessor, jeopardising Huawei’s growth in Europe.The same year, Zdeněk Hřib became mayor of Prague, his predecessor having facilitated the Prague-Beijing sister city agreement in 2016. Mayor Hřib, who had studied in Taiwan, immediately angered Chinese officials in developing ties with the island. Prague cancelled its sister city agreement with Beijing, and, three months later, entered into a new agreement with Taipei. Earlier, in August 2020, Czech Senate President Miloš Vystrčil had travelled to Taiwan on an official visit to “promote business links” between the two countries. A call between incoming Czech President Petr Pavel and Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen in March 2023 signalled a further step towards forming a clear Czech position, Pavel becoming the first EU head of state to directly communicate with a Taiwanese President.“The Czech Republic is not afraid of the coercion of authoritarian regimes, adheres to the values of freedom, democracy and respect for human rights, and continues to enhance our bilateral friendship, which is deeply admired and respected by the people of Taiwan,” said Taiwan’s Foreign Minister Joseph Wu at the time..Largest ever.The same month Czech parliamentary speaker Markéta Pekarová Adamová visited the island with a delegation of around 150 business leaders, the largest ever from the Czech Republic to visit Taiwan. Pekarová Adamová spoke to Taiwan’s parliament, saying that “we are with you now, we will continue to be with you and under any circumstances”. CzechInvest opened an office in Taipei in May 2024, and the Czech Centre Taipei held its corresponding ceremony in June of the same year.More recently, in July this year, President Pavel met the Dalai Lama in India despite similar Chinese protestations. The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule.All of these initiatives have drawn a sharp rebuke from Beijing, ranging from threats of litigation to sanctions. Beijing would prefer others to see the democratically governed island as Chinese territory with no right to the trappings of a state, including diplomatic ties, and would like to dictate exactly how others handle the relationship with Taipei.Beijing described the 2020 visit by Miloš Vystrčil as “a despicable act of opportunism”, for which they warned Czechs would pay “a heavy price”. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said that Vystrčil had “crossed the red line”.Not yet, as it’s turned out..“Wrongful decision”.China also slammed the visit by Markéta Pekarová Adamová, calling it a “wrongful decision” and urging her to cancel her trip.The Czechs have begged to differ, and to their benefit, showing others – but apparently not Tshwane – how to stand up to bullies and develop their economy. Prague’s foreign policy is value-based and commercially centred while being pragmatic – acting in the country’s interest, which is, after all, what a foreign policy is supposed to do.As Member of European Parliament Jiří Pospíšil summarised, “Taiwan is a several times larger investor in the Czech Republic than the People’s Republic of China, and on top of that it also respects the principles of freedom and democracy.”Few Chinese investment promises materialised. Taiwan’s flagship investment in the electronics manufacturer Foxconn CZ has created 5,000 jobs, growing to become the sixth-largest company in Czechia. Amid these diplomatic exchanges, Taipei and Prague have negotiated an arms deal for the latest generation of Czech self-propelled howitzers in addition to military transport, along with collaboration on drone research.This is pertinent to South Africa because Tshwane has given Taiwan an ultimatum to relocate its office in the capital to Johannesburg, making the point to Taipei (and others), presumably at Beijing’s behest, that it’s not a state.By way of background, SA severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997. The switch was handled under an agreement by which the Taipei Liaison Office was opened in Pretoria to replace the embassy, and (at the time) offices maintained in Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town where there were previously consuls..Large investors.Under this agreement, Taiwanese diplomats would continue to enjoy diplomatic privileges, including rates-free rentals along with diplomatic number plates and immunity. It was in the spirit of the overall relationship as an ambiguous, unofficial but official relationship, a way of partly satisfying honour for the Taiwanese, which had become large investors in both South Africa and the region, and also, as Nelson Mandela had acknowledged, important financial supporters of the ANC.Since then, SA has maintained formal relations only with China, to which it is increasingly close and diplomatically enmeshed through BRICS and, conversely, its souring relations with the United States.But even this downgraded relationship with Taiwan has not pleased China, which demands total submission to its one-China policy. The eager-to-please DIRCO has now sought to amend this status as Beijing’s supplicant, setting a precedent for other BRICS countries to send Taiwan packing from their capitals.But is this move in the interests of South Africans? It’s worth questioning if only because DIRCO offers an unerringly accurate analytical and moral compass in its decision making, if only routinely out by 180 degrees.There are several reasons why this move is a bad idea for SA, relating to trade, investment, and most importantly, the democratic character of Taiwan in contrast to its big brother, the PRC. It also comes at a time in geopolitics where such rash local moves might have wider, catastrophic consequences.Even though China might comprise theworld’s second-largest economy (behind the US), its values are a long way from those expressed in South Africa’s Constitution. Where SA and Taiwan are multiparty democracies, China is a one-party autocracy where its leadership condemns “Western” (but also fundamentally − for now − South African) values, including the rule of law, press freedom and constitutionalism. More than contempt Where SA is at pains to protect minority interests, China represses minorities at home, treating Uighurs, Tibetans and other groups with more than contempt. Where SA is committed to the peaceful resolution of conflict, China supports Russia’s violence in Ukraine and is on its own land-grabbing exercise in the South China Sea.The argument for taking the knee to Beijing dwells on the nearly $50-billion in two-way trade, which makes China SA’s largest single trading partner and a growing investor. Yet while it is vulnerable to a souring of relations, this dependency does not make South Africa powerless.China’s dependence on South African extractives offers some leverage, and not just for Beijing. Just as China has to weigh the potential wider retaliatory costs of sanctions on the Czech Republic as an EU member, sanctions on SA would work both ways, given China’s appetite for commodities and the need for diversified markets for its manufactures. It should also not mean abandoning Taiwanese interests in SA.With two-way trade averaging $2-billion annually, there are, according to Taipei, around 450 factories owned by Taiwanese entrepreneurs in SA employing some 40,000 people. Many of these are located in smaller towns, and there are also a large number in neighbouring Lesotho. The balance of trade volumes is, unlike the trade with China, 2:1 in SA’s favour. More acute under Xi Taiwan is also a market leader in sectors from which SA would like to benefit, and is also a prime exemplar, given the nature of Taiwanese growth − bottom-up, entrepreneur-led and less dependent on the state than the Chinese top-down, state-led alternative, the likes of which have failed dismally in Africa. This difference is more acute under Xi, who has increased state control of the economy by putting the interests of the Chinese Communist Party first.Ninety percent of the world’s most advanced semiconductors are produced in Taiwan, and around 70% of the rest. Instead of buckling under the pressure from China, just 180km across the Taiwan Strait, Taiwan has grown stronger and more sophisticated over the last 75 years, driven by the existential costs of failure, succeeding not despite its vulnerability and relative isolation, but because of it.Success for South Africa’s economy − with a GDP of $377-billion compared to Taiwan’s $795.5-billion and China’s $18-trillion − is more along the lines of the bottom-up Taiwan style of entrepreneurship than the top-down state-driven Chinese behemoth. This may also explain why, so far, Beijing can build the world’s largest network of high-speed rail but battles to produce the most advanced chips. There are clear limits and dangers when business is geared to serving the state and not vice versa. A further reason to leave things as they are is that Pretoria’s move is not being made to forestall an attempt by Taiwan to request a change in SA’s one-China policy. Worldwide, there are 112 similar offices in 58 countries maintaining Taiwan’s foreign interests and the interests of foreigners in Taiwanese businesses.Strategically, this is also a bad time to submit to pressure for such a move, given the US’s partiality towards Taiwan and the increasing fear of a Chinese invasion of the island sometime in 2027. “Deeply troubling” As Senator Ted Cruz, the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, posted on X this February: “The South African government seems to be going out of their way to alienate the United States and our allies. Their timeline to expel our Taiwanese allies from Pretoria is deeply troubling, undermines the national security interests of America and our allies, and will deepen tensions between the US and South Africa.”It is questionable whether China is a strategic partner at a moment when much of the West (with which the bulk of SA’s trade and investment occurs) views Beijing as a strategic threat, at a tactical level disrupting the internet, hacking energy systems and conducting industrial espionage; while at a strategic level working with allies to smash the rules-based international order rather than finding the means to flourish within it (just as China has done), makes little sense.It is impossible, no matter the DIRCO gymnastics, to delink China from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. China is an enabler of Russian aggression, and by deeds alone SA is complicit in its defence of this aggression. “Czechia is committed to a one-China policy, but we have our own interpretation of what that means. It certainly does not exclude cultural and trade co-operation with Taiwan”, says a spokesperson from Prague. “After all, we do not have an embassy in Taipei, but an Economic and Cultural Office.” Resisting Chinese pressure was driven by a clear identification of Czechia’s national interests.But it also came about because Prague does not like to be dictated to from outside. DIRCO’s strategy towards Taiwan and China is all about the surrender of South Africa’s sovereign interests and responsibilities to Beijing. It’s a nihilistic goal without a clear strategy. And it’s not in South Africa’s national (rather than the ANC’s party political) interests.To paraphrase Julius Malema, fresh on the back of a bucket of Iranian pistachios, the ANC has now resold South Africa for a forkful of Peking duck..*Ray Hartley is an independent commentator and Dr Greg Mills is a Fellow at the University of Navarra in Spain..This article was first published by The DailyFriend and is republished with permission.

Czechia defies Beijing: Strengthens Taiwan ties with sovereign, value-driven diplomacy

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