2024-04-11 02:01:54
The incident that took place in March in the streets of Prague is more reminiscent of a movie scene than a situation when a foreign politician visits the Czech Republic. A Chinese diplomat is suspected of following a Taiwanese politician and nearly causing a traffic accident. The Seznam Správy server reported about it last week. Chinese interference is frequent, but the experts interviewed do not remember a similar case.
From our correspondent in Taiwan – The situation took place in mid-March, when Hsiao Bi-khim, who will become vice president of Taiwan in May, came to the Czech Republic for a private visit. The police are informed about each such visit, whether it is political or not, so that they can evaluate whether they will provide the politician with protection. In this case, a request came to headquarters from the Senate asking for a police escort.
“It was in the interests of the safety of the visit and mine,” explained Senate President Miloš Vystrčil, who later met Hsiao in person, to the Seznam Zprávy server.
The server last Friday, referring to its sources, wrote that a convoy of police vehicles and a diplomatic car with Hsiao Bi-khim were followed by a private car on the way from the Prague airport in Ruzyna. He didn’t stop at the traffic lights and ran a red light into the intersection, where he almost crashed. When the police identified the driver, he showed himself with a diplomatic passport of the People’s Republic of China. According to the server, it was supposed to be a diplomat from the military department at the Chinese embassy in Prague. During a police check, the man denied following anyone. He claimed he had gone to a Chinese restaurant to eat.
According to Seznam Zpráv, the March incident is being investigated by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has summoned the Chinese ambassador because of it, and the possible expulsion of the diplomat is also being considered.
“This is the first time that someone has taken such a violent action against a person,” Roger Liu from the Taiwan National Research Institute for Democracy, Society and Emerging Technologies assesses for Aktuálně.cz.
However, this is not the first case when the People’s Republic of China tried to intimidate Czech or foreign politicians on domestic territory. “Various incidents happen regularly, but a car chase through the city like something from an action movie is quite unusual,” Simona Fantová, an analyst of the Sinopsis project focusing on China, whose conference Hsiao attended during her visit to Prague, tells Aktuálně.cz.
Even there she came with police protection, but no one informed the organizers of the event about the incident. “We knew about certain suspicious things, for example that there is a car in front of the building whose crew is filming the participants of our event,” Fantová describes.
Although Hsiao has not yet taken office, Beijing sees her as a threat. As a former diplomat in the United States, she helped negotiate a $10 billion military aid package for Taiwan to help the island defend itself against China. The neighboring power considers the island as its territory and has not ruled out the possibility of unification by military force. Beijing placed Hsiao on the sanctions list for this.
Chinese couriers in the Czech Republic
Monitoring and intimidating opponents or critics of the regime is one of Beijing’s standard activities abroad. It takes place in several ways – online, using unofficial Chinese police stations, a system of whistleblowers among the Chinese community, or operations of the Chinese secret services in foreign countries, which also resort to threats or kidnapping.
Several opponents of the regime have already spoken in the past about the presence of suspected Chinese in the Czech Republic who were connected to the Chinese embassy. “For this very reason, we usually require advance registration at our events,” explains Fantová, how Sinopsis tries to prevent possible problems.
“Of course, we had a few people who were interested in us, wanted to work with us or come to our events, who we suspected might be problematic for this very reason. Otherwise, at events organized by other entities, I experienced people who they were collecting information that they obviously wanted to pass on to the Chinese side,” he adds.
Therefore, Fantová considers Chinese actions in the Czech Republic to be “significantly ruder” compared to other European countries. He adds that they escalated especially in 2019 and 2020, when the then head of the Senate, Jaroslav Kubera, planned to visit Taiwan and faced great pressure from Beijing because of it.
Shortly before his death, he met with the Chinese ambassador and also received a document in which the Chinese embassy threatened the Czech Republic with retaliation if he visited Taiwan. Those close to Kuber later said they believed he was under intense pressure from Beijing before his death.
In addition to Taiwan, they also intimidate the Czech Republic
Roger Liu also remembers similar incidents regarding Chinese intimidation of Taiwanese politicians by the People’s Republic of China. But as he states, they were always directed at monuments or photos of politicians from Taiwan.
Liu perceives the act as intimidation of the future vice president and the Czech Republic. “They wouldn’t allow themselves to do this to the United States, France, India and other big powers. But when they want to warn countries that are friendly with the United States, they choose smaller countries like Australia and Canada,” he describes. In the named cases, Beijing arrested citizens who were born in China but later changed their citizenship. Instead of the crimes actually committed, they talk about political reasons as the reason for detention.
“It looks like they are now trying to extend the crackdown to smaller European countries, such as the Czech Republic. Regardless of local laws,” he concludes.