Britain’s duty to Taiwan

It’s not often that a brass plate sparks a diplomatic incident, as happened this week in Vilnius. Lithuania invited Taiwan to establish a ‘Taiwan representative office’ in the capital. Beijing told Vilnius that the name was unacceptable, and ordered the government to replace the word ‘Taiwan’ with ‘Taipei’ or ‘Taipei City’. Lithuania held its ground, whereupon Beijing withdrew its ambassador and simultaneously expelled Lithuania’s woman in Beijing.

There is more to this, as you might imagine, than meets the eye. Since its election of a centre-right government last October, Lithuania has been steadily reaching out to Taipei. There are good reasons for this, not least its own very recent history of bullying by an overbearing neighbour. Partly, it’s a matter of Vilnius’s interest in tapping into Taipei’s technology-centred economy. But there is also an instinctive sense that Lithuania ought to be friendly towards a functioning democracy with a decent record on human rights.

More to the point, however, Lithuania began to wonder what it had hitherto got out of holding its nose and, in common with many other European countries, cosying up to the dictatorial state on the other side of the Taiwan Strait.