In an interview to Info TV on Monday, Nausėda said that China is “a big country with long memory”. He assured that Lithuania’s “basic principles on China have remained unchanged”, but, according to him, some politicians thought that they could challenge China, likely referring to the head of Lithuania’s diplomacy.
“There has been no turnaround. We have our policy that enables Taiwan to act freely in Lithuania, to have its representative office, its name,” Landsbergis said at the conference on security matters O kas jei (What If) held on Monday.
“China decided to prohibit these things. They have a problem with us. We have never had any problems with them. (&) As regards China, discussions are ongoing. In the beginning they had caused much difficulty for our business, in an attempt to force us to backtrack, but we did not alter our position,” said the minister.
The head of Lithuania’s diplomacy notes that Beijing uses trade as a political tool and even though opportunities to export to China have been restored for Lithuanian companies, the foreign minister does not rule out that China might exert economic pressure again in the future.
As reported, relations between Lithuania and China soured after the Taiwanese Representative Office was opened in Vilnius in 2021. At the end of that year, Beijing imposed diplomatic and economic sanctions. Beijing downgraded diplomatic ties from the level of ambassador to chargé d'affaires. Whereas Lithuanian companies could not export their goods to China.
There were tensions earlier as well, when Lithuania had withdrawn from the 17+1 cooperation format with China. Although Landsbergis called on other EU Member States to follow Lithuania’s example, just Estonia and Latvia did.