Why I Brought a Czech Think Tank to Taiwan | Opinion

In early 2020, a frightened whistleblower handed me a copy of a Chinese diplomatic note. It was an official Chinese embassy document directly threatening Czech senate president Jaroslav Kubera with commercial retaliations if he proceeded in leading a business delegation to Taiwan. Shockingly, Beijing named three Czech companies doing business in China that it was willing to crush if Kubera went forward with the planned delegation. Subsequent media coverage of this attempted blackmail caused a major political scandal, and Kubera passed away before he could make the trip. Later that year, his successor and 90 businesspeople visited Taiwan the first high-level visit of a European state representative to one of Asia’s most successful democracies.

This story of Beijing’s attempted coercion and bullying of a Central European country of 10 million people is only a small episode in the increasingly severe competition between China and a growing number of democratic states. Free societies around the world are being infiltrated and squeezed by the Chinese Communist Party’s aggressive and totalitarian regime. It took us time to get here, but we understand it now.

The big game is clear. We are witnessing the beginning of the CCP’s global struggle for dominance. A simple look at the map tells the story: Beijing’s totalitarian leaders want to conquer and subdue the free and sovereign island of Taiwan for the same reasons Russia invades and murders the people of Ukraine or Georgia.

via www.newsweek.com

Those darn CCP operatives. Always coercing somebody.