China is angry. The Taiwanese Foreign Minister is heading to Prague
Taiwanese diplomacy spokeswoman Joanne Ou told reporters that Minister Wu would first attend a conference organized by the Slovak NGO in Slovakia on Tuesday and then go to Prague to meet with Senate President Milos Vystrcil and also to meet with Prague Mayor Zdenek Hrib.
He pushed out and Mushroom visited Taiwan last year, provoking a sharp reaction from Beijing.
Wu’s visit to the Czech Republic was confirmed earlier, the media only informed about his trip to Slovakia. Wu also wants to speak virtually at a meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance for China (IPAC), which will take place next week in Rome on Friday and will be attended by the Tibetan government-in-exile Penpa Cchering.
“We will seek more active support from the international community and look forward to strengthening relations between Taiwan and the democracies of Central and Eastern Europe,” Ou said.
Beijing has long been persuaded by other states not to negotiate with Taiwanese officials and thus give the impression that they recognize the island’s independence. Taiwan has been operating de facto independently since 1949, with its own government and democratic establishment, while the one-party regime continues in China.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wen-pin expressed “strong dissatisfaction” with the fact that the Czech Republic and Slovakia will allow a visit by the Taiwanese foreign minister. At the same time, they called on both countries not to “undermine the political foundations of their relations”.
Taiwan, which China considers its territory, has no official diplomatic relations with any European country except the Vatican, Reuters reports. In 2019, however, the head of Taiwan diplomacy, for example, visited Denmark, where he spoke at a democratic summit in Copenhagen.
According to the Slovak press, Wu will take part in a conference in Slovakia on Resilience and Economic Cooperation after a Pandemic, organized by the Slovak NGO Globsec. Wu will come to the Czech Republic for a two-day visit at the invitation of the Sinopsis project.