With its usual lack of nuance, China is threatening the Czech Republic.
This time, the bullying has a rather unconventional means of action: a piano.
More specifically, a Beijing customer’s canceling of a $200,000+ Czech piano order. The cancellation follows last week’s visit to Taiwan by Czech Senate Speaker Milos Vystrcil. Beijing reacted furiously to Vystrcil’s visit, in which the speaker declared support for the breakaway democracy.
Predictably, China is claiming that the piano order cancellation is an isolated action by one consumer. According to an editorial in the state-run Global Times newspaper, the piano’s price “is too small to be a credible sign of retaliation by China’s government.” But referencing split opinion in the Czech Republic over how to address China relations, the editorial warns that “the Chinese market may not bother to distinguish whether their trading partners are on the friendly side or the hostile side.”
This is vintage Chinese Communist Party bullying.
Beijing knows that Prague knows that the piano order is retaliation for Vystrcil’s visit. But Chinese President Xi Jinping’s regime wants to keep up an appearance of being kindly and willing to let this slight pass. Except that nuance isn’t in the Chinese communist dictionary. Hence the Global Times’s warning that “politicians that made the reckless provocation against [China’s] sovereignty should take responsibility for all the consequences.” In association with the piano pretense, this harder-edged tone reflects China’s awareness that the Czech people are increasingly skeptical of its agenda.
A Pew Research Center poll last December found that only 17% of Czech respondents had confidence that Xi would do “the right thing” in international relations. 53% believed he would do the wrong thing. China knows that these attitudes consolidate Vystrcil against pro-Beijing elements in Prague — notably, Czech President Milos Zeman, who is copying his Filipino counterpart Rodrigo Duterte and trying to complete a metamorphosis into Xi’s favorite poodle. Put simply, China is pretending to be cautious while actually engaging in quite direct intimidation.
In that sense, the key takeaway here is not China’s specific sensitivity over Taiwan. Instead, it’s how this situation evinces China’s willingness to use trade as a cornerstone of its broader foreign policy strategy. Unless a foreign government defers to its foreign policy agenda, Beijing will make that nation poorer. This otherwise ridiculous piano situation thus offers a window to China’s vision for a new international order. The present U.S.-led international system is rooted in the democratic rule of law, mutual respect, and the basic expectation of expanding trade. But as shown in its Czech machinations, China respects other nations only so far as they yield to Beijing’s trade and foreign policy hegemony. Put simply, where America seeks democratic partnerships, China seeks feudal serfs.
Hence the Global Times’s Mafia-style closing threat to the Czech people. “In the meantime,” the editorial taunts, “we also hope the Czech government can show more kindness to eliminate the negative impact of this unpleasant incident on bilateral relations as soon as possible.”
