This article was first published in Mandarin on Deutsche Welle’s Chinese website.
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On April 26, the wife and daughter of the former Czech Senate leader Jaroslav Kubera accused the Chinese Embassy in the Czech Republic of causing his death in January. At the center of the whole incident were two letters that were given to Kubera as a warning prior to his scheduled trip to Taiwan. However, experts think this unfortunate incident also reflects the shifting relationship between the Czech Republic, China and Taiwan.
Czech Republic’s former senate leader Jaroslav Kubera suddenly passed away on January 20, forcing the senate delegation to drop its scheduled trip to Taiwan in February. In a TV interview on April 26, Kubera’s daughter and wife alleged that the two letters containing threats to Kubera were the critical cause of his sudden death.
The news renewed discussions related to China’s growing political influence on the Czech Republic. On April 27, Kubera’s successor Milos Vystcil launched an investigation into these letters, emphasizing that doing so was to defend the country’s sovereignty and freedom.
According to Filip Jirous, a researcher at the Czech think tank Sinopsis, while Beijing tried to make Kubera abandon his plans to visit Taiwan through waves of pressure campaigns, what was more striking to him was the fact that the Czech president’s office actually requested the Chinese embassy to deliver the threatening letter to Kubera.
“The Czech president’s own chancellor, Vratislav Mynář, asked the Chinese embassy to write that threatening letter,” said Jirous. “Mynář belongs to a China lobby circle around a large Czech corporation called PPF, which has huge commercial interests in China and has been utilizing its political influence to keep the Czech-Chinese relationship in a good shape since at least 2013.”
Jirous said the revelation above shows that the pressure that Czech politicians often experience actually come from the Czech China lobby circle rather than from the Chinese government.
How the Chinese embassy threatened Kubera
In the TV interview on April 26, Vera Kuberova said she found two threatening letters in Kubera’s possession, one from the Chinese Embassy and one from the Czech president’s office. In the embassy’s letter, they demanded Kubera to cancel his planned trip to Taiwan, and threatened to let major Czech corporations pay a heavy price if he decided to stick to his original plan.
Apart from the threatening letters, Kuberova said that Kubera was invited to a Lunar New Year banquet organized by the Chinese Embassy on January 17. On that occasion, the Chinese ambassador Chien-Hung Zhang threatened Kubera not to make the trip to Taiwan again. According to Kuberova, her husband told her that if he insisted on visiting Taiwan, the Chinese ambassador claimed he would try to get Kubera replaced.
Three days after that encounter, Kubera died in his office. According to doctor’s diagnosis, Kubera may have suffered a cardiac arrest on January 17 or January 18, which shows that he was undergoing a lot of stress at the time.
The tricky trilateral relationship
Jirous points out that over the last seven years, Czech president Milos Zeman has been trying to deliver the investment promises made by China, but very few of these plans actually materialized. This led to a gradual lost of faith in the empty promises made by Zeman’s government and Beijing among the Czech public.
“To be fair, except for the local Communist Party, there remain very few people who would push for more economic cooperation with China in a manner that’s similar to Zeman’s economic diplomacy,” Jirous said.
On the contrary, certain factions within the Czech society have positive perceptions of Taiwan. To Jirous, the bilateral cooperation between the Czech Republic and Taiwan has been quite successful and strong, especially when it is compared to the international isolation that Taiwan has to endure.
“There is now certainly more space for the Czech-Taiwan relations to improve and to be strengthened, “Jirous said. “To some extent, this is the result of the growing negative opinion that the Czech people have towards China. Additionally, the recent argument between the Prague City government, the Chinese government and Taiwan has also helped to increase Taiwan’s presence in the Czech Republic.”
Even though China continues to threaten Czech politicians with economic means, the absence of Chinese investment and the relatively small amount of Czech investment in China make Beijing’s economic threats rather hollow, according to Jirous.
“The actual economic influence that China has over the Czech Republic is smaller when it’s compared to Beijing’s political influence over Prague,” Jirous concluded.
However, since the coronavirus outbreak, the pro-China political faction in the Czech Republic has been energized by the pandemic and China’s attempt to frame itself as the savior. “The pandemic has got some of them back to rather influential positions, as they try to restart the bilateral relations between Beijing and Prague,” said Jirous.
“This could slow the process of political shift, but unless both countries reach substantive economic cooperation, I don’t think the strategy will be sustainable in the long run,” Jirous predicted.
(Cover photo by David Sedlecký on Wikicommons, CC BY-SA 4.0)
