Geo-Strategic Trend - 114. page

The Czech media website Aktualne.cz broke a story on December 11 that there is “a network of experts, journalists, and politicians,” which has been seeking to “influence the Czech society” by spreading pro-Beijing opinions. The news caught the attention of several members of the Czech Parliament, who announced on Sunday, December 15, that they intend to ask to set up a parliamentary committee to investigate the matter.

According to Aktualne.cz, this campaign was launched in April 2019 and is funded by Home Credit, an international non-banking financial institution owned by the Czech Republic’s richest man Petr Kellner. The article said that Kellner, who was close to the Czech president, secretly funded a media public relations agency called “C&B Reputation Management” to carry out activities to improve China’s image in Czech. C&B is responsible for external communications for the Sinoskop Institute for Contemporary China, a pro-Beijing think tank that was set up in June 2019. Czech media regularly interviews the head of Sinoskop, who has ties with the Czech President and Petr Kellner.

In addition, Tomas Jirsa, who owns C&B, started to operate the Czech’s major website Info.cz in January 2019. Since then, the site has published several advertisement like pro-China articles, paid by Home Credit. Several journalists who oppose this have stopped working for the website. One of them publicly stated on Czech public television that the site “publishes less and less criticism of China, and the cooperation with an important think tank that criticizes Beijing has also been suspended.”

Under the “Belt and Road” framework, China has been interested in central Europe for years. Czech President Milos Zeman has always wanted to make his country “a gateway to Europe.”

At the same time, however, Czech’s civil society is showing strong resistance to China’s attempts to influence the Czech Republic. For example, the Mayor of Prague questioned the cooperation agreement with Beijing based on the one-China principle. In addition, at the end of November, the Czech intelligence service officially regarded China’s influence as a “threat” to the Czech Republic’s national security.

Source: Radio France International, December 17, 2019
http://rfi.my/53sg.T

Die Weltwoche, a Swiss weekly magazine based in Zürich and founded in 1933, has invited the Chinese Ambassador to Switzerland Geng Wenbing to open a “China Perspective” column to promote China’s national policy. Geng opened the column on April 4 of this year. He published his first column titled, “Autonomy and Prosperity.” The article adopted China’s propaganda tone and said that Tibet “under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, went from serfdom to openness,” without a single word mentioning Beijing’s high-pressure policy in Tibet. Roger Köppel, the owner of Die Weltwoche, wrote an introduction for Geng Wenbing and praised China’s development saying, “China is highly questioned in the West, and the Western media has given a one-sided voice to critics and dissidents. China’s official views are absent in the Western media.” As a result, the magazine launched “the world’s first platform for the representatives from the Chinese government.”

Roger Köppel, a member of the Swiss Federal Assembly, took ownership of Die Weltwoche in 2006. Since then, assisted by the Chinese embassy in Switzerland, the newspaper has seen a surge in advertising. Its stance has also become increasingly pro-Beijing.

Later, Geng successively published articles promoting China’s “Belt and Road Initiative,” defending the “Xinjiang Concentration Camps,” protesting the “U.S. Trade War,” criticizing “Hong Kong Protesters,” and chanting the “70th Anniversary of the Chinese Communist Regime.” Not long ago, when China’s internal documents regarding Xinjiang were exposed, Geng, in one of his articles, said that the Beijing government was “committed to promoting and maintaining ethnic diversity and solidarity.” Two weeks later, a Chinese company Saurer ran a full-page advertisement on Die Weltwoche.

In fact, since March 28 of this year, Die Weltwoche published eight full-page advertisements, including China Construction Bank, under the name “China Week,” with each advertisement valued at over 10,000 Swiss francs (US$10, 200). Coincidentally, seven days after the Chinese advertising campaign at the end of March, Chinese Ambassador Geng Wenbing’s column officially opened. The email that the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, a German-language daily newspaper, obtained showed that the commerce staff at the Chinese Embassy coordinated the advertising campaign and Die Weltwoche was aware of the arrangement.

Ralph Weber, a China expert in Switzerland, believes that the Die Weltwoche is a standard model of the Chinese Communist Party’s expansion of its influence abroad. Its not an isolated case in Europe. In October this year, a German media disclosed a joint “Dialogue” program and cooperation between Norddeutscher Rundfunk (Northern German Broadcasting), a Hamburg based German public radio and television broadcaster, and the China Global Television Network group.

Source: Radio Free Asia, December 17, 2019
https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/sz-degrade-12172019090424.html

Richard T. Lee served as a Member of the British Columbia Legislative Assembly from 2001 to 2017. He recently revealed that, four years ago, the Chinese authorities detained him for eight hours at the Shanghai airport. He and his wife had gone there for a vacation. Chinese officials confiscated and searched his business phone, cancelled his visa, and forced him to fly back from China immediately.

Mr. Lee and his wife had gone to Shanghai at the end of 2015 to celebrate their 30th wedding anniversary. After they arrived in Shanghai, Chinese authorities separated them. Mr. Lee was kept in a room. Two Chinese officials took away his personal phone and his business phone. They demanded his password, which he eventually gave them. The Chinese officials looked at his emails, including the emails that were in his BC Legislative Assembly account.

Those officials didn’t make a specific charge against him, but they claimed that his actions had “endangered China’s state security.” Mr. Lee asked to talk to the Canadian Consulate in Shanghai and Canada’s Ambassador in China, but his request was denied.

Finally, the Chinese officials returned his phones and asked that he and his wife leave China immediately.

Mr. Lee said that he had openly supported Taiwan independence and democracy in Hong Kong. He believed that was what angered Beijing. “I attended the candle light event in front of China’s Vancouver Consulate on June Fourth every year (the day of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre). Many times the Chinese consulate staff warned me not to go there. China’s then Consul General Liu Fei at Vancouver asked me not to attend the event in 2017.”

Mr. Lee was serving as the Deputy Speaker of the BC Legislative Assembly when the incident occurred. He said that he didn’t publicize this case then as he did not want to damage the Canadian-China relationship.

Source: Radio France International, November 30, 2019
http://www.rfi.fr/cn/中国/20191130-加拿大华裔前议员自揭四年前在中国机场曾被不正当拘留

Primary Taiwanese news agency Central News Agency (CNA) recently reported that Beijing’s former sister city, Prague, will soon become the sister city of Taipei. After cutting its close ties with Beijing, Prague’s mayor Zdenek Hrib announced that Taipei will be Prague’s new sister city starting in January 2020. The Prague City Council just passed the new sister city agreement. The former relationship between Prague and Beijing was severed after Beijing rejected the friendliness Prague had towards Taiwan. Beijing revoked the panda lease to Prague and unilaterally stopped a few cultural exchange event contracts. Taipei mayor Ko Wen-je is scheduled to visit Prague in January. The two cities are planning to strengthen their relationship in key areas like trade, culture, tourism and education.

Source: CNA, December 3, 2019
https://www.cna.com.tw/news/firstnews/201912030012.aspx