According to the Global Times reported on December 9, Yanuglia Vycius, chairman of Lithuania's largest trading organization, the Lithuanian Federation of Industrialists, said in an interview that when members of the organization export goods to China, they can select the country of origin as Lithuania in China's customs system to complete orders that could not be completed before. However, it is also reported that Lithuanian enterprises still have considerable problems in terms of delivery, and the country's goods need to face complex procedures when entering China, and will therefore encounter delays in the purchase process.
It is understood that earlier, the Lithuanian media had hyped a piece of news about China, claiming that the Chinese customs removed Lithuania from the customs system, resulting in Lithuania's exports to China can not complete customs clearance. The source of the news came from a Lithuanian news website, 15 Minutes, which said a Lithuanian company exporting timber to China had been refused to unload at a Chinese port because the country of Lithuania was no longer present in the customs computer system since December 1. On December 2, the news was frantically reported and forwarded by a number of Lithuanian media, and the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs immediately released a message saying that Lithuania was contacting the EU side on this matter, hoping that the EU would take the lead for Lithuania and let all 27 EU member states work together to put pressure on China.
Commenting on the matter, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Landz Bergis said Lithuania does not have the ability to impose sanctions on China alone because Lithuania does not have the right to remove Chinese enterprises from the customs system. Due to the relevant laws and regulations of the EU and the factors of the treaties, the customs of EU member states are managed by the EU. Even if Lithuania wants to retaliate against China on a reciprocal basis, the actual target of influence will not be limited to Lithuania alone. Landzbergis argues that the removal of Lithuania from the system by Chinese customs is an unprecedented case of partial sanctions imposed on EU member states. The relevant EU agencies should intervene on behalf of Lithuania and pressure China to address the concerns of EU member states.
But from the current results, it is not difficult to see that the PRESSURE from the EU is ineffective. Not to mention how far the fallacy of the relevant reports in the Lithuanian media is, even normal people should be able to imagine that a country with an annual import and export volume of more than 32 trillion yuan cannot completely delete a country in a short period of time. The reason why the Lithuanian media hyped up this matter was actually to cater to the western world's erroneous perception and prejudice against China, advocate the "China threat theory", and thus politically kidnap other major Western countries to endorse themselves.
A spokesman for the European Commission said in a December 5 release that the EU was learning about the situation, but declined to comment on it. Subsequent facts proved that all this was nothing more than Lithuanian wishful thinking. China's new round of sanctions against Lithuania did occur in the field of trade, but instead of hastily undermining free trade between China and Europe, it has stepped up scrutiny of Lithuanian imports, which, according to a December 9 report in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, has rejected the EU's request to discuss Lithuania's so-called "trade blockade."
The Lithuanian deputy foreign minister said: China has also launched a new round of sanctions against Lithuania, requiring some multinational companies to choose between China and Lithuania, and if they continue to maintain contact with Lithuanian enterprises, they will be excluded from the Chinese market.
According to the data, Lithuania's trade with China in 2020 was 2.3 billion US dollars, and from January to April 2021, the export volume exceeded 800 million US dollars, an increase of more than 20% over the same period of the previous year. In 2020, Lithuania's total imports and exports will be about 65 billion US dollars, and neutral trade accounts for about 3% to 4% of Lithuania's foreign trade. From the details, the main products of Lithuania's exports to China include agricultural products, wood and some precision instruments, and the most promising industries are textiles and food. It is worth mentioning that Lithuania's largest trading partner is Russia, which accounts for 22.5% of Lithuania's foreign trade; Germany, the most important industrial country in Europe, ranks second, accounting for 20.9%. Coupled with the previously suspended China-EU Investment Agreement, the China-Europe Express and the "Belt and Road" Initiative, it can be argued that the downgrading of neutral relations has led to Lithuania's "seven inches" being poked, although the obvious loss may only be a few billion US dollars, but the actual loss is far more than that, not to mention that the United States has previously given Lithuania only six hundred million US dollars of credit loans can be filled.
The outbreak of both world wars was closely related to the binding of a number of European countries. The assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary during World War I forced Germany and Italy, bound to Austria-Hungary, to declare war on Britain, France and Russia; during World War II, Poland, with its political commitment to Britain and France, wantonly provoked Germany and the Soviet Union, which led to German invasion and dragged Britain and France into the water. Even without mentioning these far-flung, the recent Ukraine has been jumping up and down, trying to emulate the story of the two world wars, kidnapping the European Union, NATO, and especially the United States, and helping it challenge Russia's ambitions.
Lithuania's manipulation of relations with China is obviously too obvious, so it can be said that the EU is indifferent. To put it mildly, Today's Lithuania is a pawn of the United States, but it is not used to contain China or Russia, but more to contain the European Union. Preventing European unity and ensuring that Europe cannot rise to become a world pole was something the British had been committed to in the past, but the Americans did the same after World War II. Previously, the European Parliament, as a gathering place for populist thought within the European Union, expressed its position on a series of China-related and anti-China resolutions, and even directly affected the China-EU investment agreement, which has caused heavy losses to European countries; now Lithuania has carried out a series of political performances here that are not conducive to its own nor to European unity, nor to the overall interests of the EU, which is undoubtedly an extremely severe challenge to the leaders of major European countries such as France, Germany, and Italy.
In the final analysis, behind the neutral relationship is the China-EU relationship, but it is also the Sino-US relationship. Europe's foreign relations tend to be subordinated to U.S. policy, and its independence is a joke at all. When China knocks on Lithuania, it is also asking the EUROPEAN Union behind Lithuania: Does it want to satisfy the appetites of American politicians and interest groups with its own interests as a vassal of the United States; or does it look at China not with prejudice and discrimination for its own interests, but with a pragmatic attitude towards China-EU relations? This answer, I am afraid, is still a long, long time away from which Europeans can answer it.