There is a less discussed diplomatic battle being fought between Lithuania and China whose outcomes will set important precedents and shape expectations in the emerging world order involving a belligerent China.
Sample this,
After the Taiwanese representative office in Vilnius opened last month, Beijing imposed economic sanctions on Lithuania. This month, it blocked all Lithuanian exports to China by removing the country from the customs administration’s country list, in effect making it impossible for companies to file customs declarations. Lithuania was restored to the list after a few days, but national and EU officials said Lithuanian exports to China remained blocked as any attempt at processing shipments returned an error and customs officials refused to assist. Chinese companies have cancelled orders of Lithuanian products and from Lithuanian suppliers
And then this,
The Chinese government had demanded Lithuania’s remaining diplomats in Beijing hand in their diplomatic IDs to the foreign ministry to have their diplomatic status lowered. The move raised concern in Vilnius that the officials could lose diplomatic immunity, putting their safety at risk if they remained in China. Gabrielius Landsbergis, Lithuania’s foreign minister, said later on Wednesday that China had also “unilaterally” decided to rename the Baltic country’s embassy in Beijing. The Chinese wanted to call it “the office of the chargé d’affaires”, according to officials.
Lithuanian government has rightly pulled out its citizens and virtually shut down its embassy in Beijing.
It remains to be seen as to how the European Union and United States will respond to such naked bullying of a member of EU, NATO, and the Euro zone. If the EU glosses over this, it has the potential to become a reprise of the much discussed appeasement of Hitler's Germany before the World War II. It will embolden China to pursue what are plain illegal and without any pretensions.
In this context, it's amazing that China's brazen bullying of Lithuania evokes hardly any indignation among politicians and opinion makers on both sides of the Atlantic, compared to their loud bellicosity on Russia mobilising troops on the Ukrainian border. The above incidents are not even considered important enough to be covered by newspapers like the NYT (as of this time, there is not one report on the latest incidents!).
To be sure, both are to be condemned. But the former has the potential to be very important in shaping the emerging world order. Western opinion makers and leaders are yet to realise that the Cold War with USSR is long over, and their new powerful enemy is China.
Update 1 (19.12.2021)
The Economist has this to write about the Chinese actions on Lithuania.
In contrast with the cold war against the Soviet Union, the concern is not that China is bent on exporting revolution or overthrowing global capitalism. Instead, China is seen as a disrupter of the rules-based order: willing to use instruments of commerce and diplomatic intercourse as weapons, even as Chinese leaders talk up multilateralism and free trade. China’s treatment of Lithuania follows a pattern seen in other recent rows with American allies. Among them are Australia and Canada, which have suffered unacknowledged trade boycotts and seen citizens imprisoned as hostages in bilateral disputes. Before that, it was the turn of Japan and South Korea to face undeclared economic sanctions for displeasing China.
And on China's strategy
For some weeks, importers have been unable to list Lithuania as a country of origin in Chinese customs databases, making it impossible to clear shipments (Lithuania does not export much to China, however). German and French firms have been warned that they may not ship goods with Lithuanian components to China, potentially blocking hundreds of containers already in transit. There are rumours that the People’s Bank of China, the central bank, has forbidden banks from issuing letters of credit covering trade in or out of any port in the Baltic states. When eu officials raised these concerns, Chinese authorities retorted that Lithuania is lying and that the eu should beware of being taken hostage by a tiny troublemaker.
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