TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Saturday (Dec. 11) marks the 20th anniversary of China’s ascent to the World Trade Organization (WTO), but it comes at a time when Beijing is taking its unlawful economic bullying of Lithuania to new heights.
The world’s second-largest economy is now calling for a corporate-led boycott of the tiny Baltic state, threatening multinationals to cut trade ties with Lithuania or risk being shut out of its gargantuan market, according to a Reuters report. It is the latest move in an ongoing campaign by Beijing to punish Lithuania for allowing Taiwan to establish a representative office in its capital, Vilnius, under its own name.
On Thursday (Dec. 9), the EU raised Lithuania’s claim that China has placed “unannounced sanctions” on its products with the WTO leadership, per Bloomberg. China has denied its blocking Lithuania’s exports but did not provide the EU with the information it requested to verify this.
Though China has tried to cower Lithuania into submission by either sanctioning or by closing consulate services in the country, Lithuania has not budged. Conscious that its bilateral trade volume with Lithuania is negligible, China appears to be trying another method now – encircling Lithuania by goading multinationals to cut it off from the global market.
"They (China) have been sending messages to multinationals that if they use parts and supplies from Lithuania, they will no longer be allowed to sell to the Chinese market or get supplies there," Mantas Adomenas, Lithuania's vice-minister for foreign affairs, told Reuters.
"We have seen some companies cancel contracts with Lithuanian suppliers,” he went on, without naming names.
An article by state media outlet Xinhua about the country’s WTO anniversary writes that China is “a trustworthy member of the WTO, has fully and effectively fulfilled its commitments to the organization, and has earned wide recognition from the vast majority of WTO members.”
Yet China’s self-aggrandizing narrative seems at odds with the rising tide of complaints other WTO members are leveling against it.
In October, the U.S., EU, Australia, Japan, U.K, and Canada all lined up to accuse China of a long list of trade felonies and economic bullying at a WTO get-together in Geneva. It was China’s first trade policy review since 2018 and showed how dramatically leading global economies have soured on the communist state.
The title of a research paper released by Singaporean academic Henry S. Gao (高树超) on Thursday (Dec. 9) provides a neat summary of China’s historic arc at the WTO: “China’s Changing Perspective on the WTO: From Aspiration, Assimilation to Alienation.”
“Twenty years after it became a member of the WTO, China’s image in popular perception has shifted from the biggest success story of the world trading system to its biggest challenge,” he wrote.
