"VILNIUS, Lithuania — It was never a
secret that China tightly controls what its people can read and write on their
cellphones. But it came as a shock to officials in Lithuania when they
discovered that a popular Chinese-made handset sold in the Baltic nation had a
hidden though dormant feature: a censorship registry of 449 terms banned by the
Chinese Communist Party.
Lithuania’s government swiftly
advised officials using the phones to dump them, enraging China — and not for
the first time. Lithuania has also embraced Taiwan, a vibrant democracy that
Beijing regards as a renegade province, and pulled out of a Chinese-led
regional forum that it scorned as divisive for the European Union.
Furious, Beijing has recalled its
ambassador, halted trips by a Chinese cargo train into the country and made it
nearly impossible for many Lithuanian exporters to sell their goods in China.
Chinese state media has assailed Lithuania, mocked its diminutive size and
accused it of being the “anti-China vanguard” in Europe.
In the battlefield of geopolitics,
Lithuania versus China is hardly a fair fight — a tiny Baltic nation with fewer
than 3 million people against a rising superpower with 1.4 billion. Lithuania’s
military has no tanks or fighter jets, and its economy is 270 times smaller
than China’s.
But, surprisingly, Lithuania has
proved that even tiny countries can create headaches for a superpower,
especially one like China whose diplomats seem determined to make other nations
toe their line. Indeed, Lithuania, which does little trade with China, has
caused enough of a stink that its fellow members in the European Union are
expected to discuss the situation at a meeting next week. Nothing could be
worse for Beijing than if other countries followed Lithuania’s example.
Lithuania’s small size, the foreign
minister lamented, “made us an easy target” for China because “their
calculation is that it is good to pick enemies way, way, way below your size,
draw them into the fighting ring and then beat them to pulp.”
Despite its puny size, Lithuania
looms surprisingly large in Chinese calculations, said Wu Qiang, a political
analyst in Beijing, partly because of its role as a transit corridor for trains
carrying goods from China to Europe.
“China regards Lithuania as a museum to save
itself from a Soviet-like collapse,” Mr. Wu said
But it also reflects a wider
backlash against China’s aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy across Europe and
disenchantment with soaring Chinese exports that left imports from Europe
trailing far behind.
In recent years, China has created
resentment through hectoring behavior that reminds many in Lithuania of past
bullying by Moscow. In 2019 Chinese diplomats organized a belligerent protest
to counter a rally by Lithuanian citizens in support of Hong Kong’s democracy
movement. The Chinese intervention led to scuffles in Cathedral Square of
Vilnius, the capital.
From China’s perspective, last
week’s release of a report on the Chinese-made cellphones by Lithuania’s Defense
Ministry Cyber Security Center was yet another provocation. The hidden
registry found by the center allows for the detection and censorship of phrases
like “student movement,” “Taiwan independence,” and “dictatorship.”
Tired of being pressured by Beijing,
prominent politicians joined a Taiwan friendship group in Parliament and
attended a Taiwan national day celebration in Vilnius last October.
Not everyone supports the
government’s policy. Linas Linkevicius, a former foreign minister, notes that
Lithuania already has daggers drawn with Russia and neighboring Belarus, whose
exiled opposition leader, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, operates from Vilnius.
“We are exposed on too many fronts,”
he said.
Opinion surveys by the European Council on Foreign
Relations indicate that most Europeans don’t want a new Cold War
between the United States and China. But they also show growing wariness of
China.
“There is a general shift in mood,”
said Frank Juris, a researcher at the Estonian Foreign Policy Institute who tracks Chinese activities in
Europe. “Promises have not materialized and countries are tired of
being constantly threatened with the whip.”
That whip is now being brought down
hard on Lithuania, a member of the European Union and also NATO.
Particularly galling for Beijing was
Lithuania’s announcement in July that it had accepted a request by Taiwan to
open a “Taiwanese representative office” in Vilnius.
China’s foreign ministry accused
Lithuania of crossing a “red line,” and urged it “to immediately rectify its
wrong decision,” and “not to move further down the wrong path.”
Many countries, including Germany
and neighboring Latvia, have similar Taiwanese offices but, to avoid angering
Beijing, they officially represent Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, not Taiwan itself.
And in May, Lithuania withdrew from
a diplomatic forum grouping China and 17 countries in East and Central Europe
that promotes Mr. Xi’s Belt and Road initiative, a multi-billion-dollar
infrastructure program.
The blacklist, which updates
automatically to reflect the Communist Party’s evolving concerns, lies dormant
in phones exported to Europe but, according to the cyber center, the disabled
censorship tool can be activated with the flick of a switch in China.
The registry “is shocking and very
concerning,” said Margiris Abukevicius, a deputy defense minister responsible
for cybersecurity.
The maker of the Chinese phones in
question, Xiaomi, says its devices “do not censor communications.”
In addition to telling government
offices to dump the phones, Mr. Abukevicius said in an interview that ordinary
users should decide “their own appetite for risk.”
The Global Times, a nationalist news
outlet controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, derided the Lithuanian report
as a “new trick” by a small “pawn” in Washington’s anti-China agenda.
China has steadily ramped up
pressure on Lithuania, last month recalling its ambassador from Vilnius and
urging Lithuania’s envoy in Beijing to go home, which she did. It halted a
regular cargo train to Lithuania, though it still lets other trains transit
through the Baltic country filled with Chinese goods destined for Germany.
While not announcing any formal
sanctions, China has added red tape to block Lithuanian exporters from selling
goods in China.
Lithuania’s economy minister,
Ausrine Armonaite, downplayed the damage, noting Lithuania’s exports to China
accounted for only 1 percent of total exports. Losing that, she said, “is not
too harmful.”
A bigger blow, according to business
leaders, has been the disruption in the supply of Chinese-made glass,
electronic components and other items needed by Lithuanian manufacturers.
Around a dozen companies that rely on goods from China last week received
nearly identical letters from Chinese suppliers claiming that power cuts had
made it difficult fulfill orders.
“They are very creative,” said
Vidmantas Janulevicius, the president of the Lithuanian Confederation of
Industrialists, noting that the delays were “targeted very precisely.”"
