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Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

economist.com

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Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#41

Post by ekianjo »

varjag wrote: post #33
mantas wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lithuania did sentence some Nazis in 1935 to deter Germany in Klaipėda/Memel. Then managed to hold onto it till spring of 1939. Then refused Hitler offer to join attacking Poland. In 1941-1944 people tried to stay away from Nazis and keep a fighting chance against Soviets once they’ll be back. For example Lithuanian SS division was never formed as in other occupied territories. While Germans did push for it, locals a…

> Then refused Hitler offer to join attacking Poland. Which is more than what the ostensibly anti-fascist USSR did.

> Which is more than what the ostensibly anti-fascist USSR did.

The funniest part is that when the USSR started the invade the other half of Poland right after Germany started, none of the allies declared war on the USSR while they had a protection treaty with Poland in the first place.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#42

Post by [deleted] »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #27

Why "evacuate"? Were the safety of the embassy's staff under threat? I can't help but wonder if the word was deliberately chosen for click-baiting --- the only three occurrences of "evacuate/evacuation", including the one in the title, are concentrated in the second and third paragraphs --- it is as if they are injected as a last-minute after-thought.

[deleted]

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#43

Post by chongli »

jeidz wrote: post #5
lmilcin wrote: post #4

There is a simple solution. If most of western world allowed Taiwan embassies China would have to relent. They can't afford having entire western world stand against them. Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.

They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.

Sure we can. It may hurt a lot at first but we'll get over it. Think about how hard it was to rebuild after WW2. This would be nowhere near that difficult since none of the west is a bombed-out ruin today and all of the west is made up of advanced economies with highly educated populations. Furthermore, there are developing countries (such as Vietnam) that are going full-steam-ahead with ramping up production, especially in heavy industry.

The ones who can't afford to be without China's manufacturing are big tech companies like Apple. Perhaps they will take a huge hit but it's hard to imagine them going out of business. I remember the Apple of the mid 90's and how close they came to going out of business. Now, with the enormous cash hoard and other capital they've accumulated, I can easily imagine them surviving for many years even if they were cut off completely from all their manufacturing in China.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#45

Post by pas »

someguydave wrote: post #9

Europeans were quick to scorn Mr Trump’s policies but the reality is that China has been unfair in its trade practices. Also, losing liberty in Hong Kong was sad but it will be much worse if free Taiwan is crushed by CCP ambition. The West should have alot of introspection about which battles are the right ones to choose. How will history judge the current leadership of the West if they abandon Taiwan?

> Europeans were quick to scorn Trump’s policies

yes

> China has been unfair in its trade practices

yes

but these doesn't have much to do with each other.

It was already known before Trump that the lack of trade/investment reciprocity with China is big fucking problem. (2016 Brookings report, and Brookings is not a conservative think tank. Quite the opposite - according to conservative pundits.)

Of course this concern was mostly completely ignored, because the money was good. (The economy was booming, who cares if the CCP is a narcissist control freak. Human rights violations are nothing new, it's just Tibet again.)

https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/hvmilner/f...

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#46

Post by Enginerrrd »

lmilcin wrote: post #4

There is a simple solution. If most of western world allowed Taiwan embassies China would have to relent. They can't afford having entire western world stand against them. Unfortunately, that would require western nations to agree on something.

Nah, it would require them to put principles over the profit of a few constituents. China's geopolitical strategy is brilliant. They see that their adversaries in democratic western countries are beholden to the quarterly profits of a handful of corporations. China, unlike any of the Western nations, WILL take a stand on their principles over profit (At least they seem to, but more on that in a second.) So, they've really effectively backdoored our politicians. If US companies don't comply with their demands, they just pull their rights to do business in China. When that's worth like $100-150 million annually, the corporations care, and so the politicians care.

Seems like nobody in these corporations or in politics has a spine anymore and is willing to say, "Yeah, I understand, but No, and fuck you for even asking."

Now all that said, I think if they saw some real unified push-back Xi would drop that shit in a hot second, but for now it comes at very little cost.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#47

Post by WitCanStain »

ekianjo wrote: post #37
jeidz wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can. The western world can’t afford to be without China’s manufacturing, though.

China's economy would crumble a little if it could not sell anything outside anymore. Imagine a few billions of people losing their current level of life in China... a good recipe for regime change.

All that would happen is that the Chinese government would become even more authoritarian and a whole lot of people would be worse off. These fantasies always seem to ignore the human cost.

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#48

Post by baylearn »

RyEgswuCsn wrote: post #27

Why "evacuate"? Were the safety of the embassy's staff under threat? I can't help but wonder if the word was deliberately chosen for click-baiting --- the only three occurrences of "evacuate/evacuation", including the one in the title, are concentrated in the second and third paragraphs --- it is as if they are injected as a last-minute after-thought.

The Chinese government had demanded Lithuania’s remaining diplomats in Beijing hand in their diplomatic IDs to the foreign ministry to have their diplomatic status lowered. The move raised concern in Vilnius that the officials could lose diplomatic immunity, putting their safety at risk if they remained in China. [1]

After Lithuania allowed Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius under the "Taiwan" name, and subsequently getting blocked from Chinese customs from EU shipping routes [2], and now being asked to change the ID of their diplomats to remove the diplomatic status, many would not doubt that the Chinese government would arrest and detain some embassy staff in this move, as ordinary residents of the country, like they have done in the past in the case of Canadians [3]

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/587cff8f-3a7f-45c3-b4c7-8ac6f3e0a...

[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/china-lithuania-trade-idUSKB...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Detention_of_Michael_Spavor_an...

Re: Lithuania evacuates its embassy in China

#49

Post by sebow »

someguydave wrote: post #9

Europeans were quick to scorn Mr Trump’s policies but the reality is that China has been unfair in its trade practices. Also, losing liberty in Hong Kong was sad but it will be much worse if free Taiwan is crushed by CCP ambition. The West should have alot of introspection about which battles are the right ones to choose. How will history judge the current leadership of the West if they abandon Taiwan?

That's a big of a strawman.I think more correctly would be to say western europeans(and even then not entire accurate, many brits and germans for example like trump,especially when he defended HK) were more critical of trump (if not outright TDS oftenly) than the rest of the continent.

Especially eastern europeans(not the media) weren't critical at all of Trump,for key reasons: he was pro-nato, he promoted 3SI, pushed back against Russia(contrarian to what MSM said).The very important distinction and the reason you might have that impression is because the media is de facto the same on the entire continent and very much US-aligned.The EE media outlets literally copy-paste western talking points, you rarely see opposite voices, obviously with the exceptions of outlets that are either local or not the biggest, and why not often owned politicians with opposing voices..

With very few exceptions, the entire EE dislikes to a degree(to say hate is strong here) China,mostly on an ideological context.The more important question is to analyze China's (forceful) involvement into EE and specially Balkans.You see how hard they try to push development projects in Serbia,Bulgaria, etc and you really get surprised.They try to fund everything they can(because they have money) in order to expand their sphere of influence.However they have less success when it comes to critical infrastructure with nato members.Also on the Taiwan/HK issue, i don't think many people are pro-china at all.

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