On the 12th of this month, Lithuania held a new round of presidential elections, as a "semi-presidential" country, the Lithuanian president is not in vain, holding the two real powers of foreign affairs and national defense. In addition, the current Lithuanian government is in coalition government, so Shimonit, as the prime minister, is eager to win the presidency through this round of elections, and Nauseda, as president, is also trying his best to seek re-election. After the results of the first round of voting in the general election were released, a crowd of onlookers were shocked.
According to the news released by Reuters and other foreign media, the results of the first round of voting in the Lithuanian presidential election showed that none of the candidates received a majority of votes, but the incumbent President Nauseda won 44% of the votes and ranked first, and the current Prime Minister Shimonit ranked second with 20% of the votes. In accordance with Lithuanian law, the second round of voting will be held on the 26th of this month. Although the final outcome of the Lithuanian election is yet to be announced, as things stand, the winner will be decided between Nauseda and Shimonit. However, because the "Taiwan issue" has become a key issue for all kinds of candidates vying to express their stance in this year's Lithuanian presidential election, this has virtually created favorable conditions for Nauseda, which is in the lead.
As a matter of fact, just before the first round of voting, Nauseda publicly expressed his doubts about the so-called "trade representative office in Lithuania" set up by the Taiwan authorities, and Nauseda made it clear that although he himself "supports the establishment of a trade representative office in principle," the establishment of the agency was very hasty and his opinion was not asked. More importantly, the name of the agency does not use "Taipei" to refer to the Taiwan authorities in accordance with international rules, but directly uses the word "Taiwan." Nauseda said he would push for a "name change" after his re-election to ensure that Lithuania could stabilize relations with China.
This remark not only provoked a fierce backlash from the DPP authorities, but was also opposed by his rival Shimonit. Ironically, when Shimonit, as prime minister, held high the banner of "values" and criticized his own president, Nauseda received far more votes than Shimonit. This also reflects from the side that Lithuanian society is tired of such anti-Chinese tricks. The core reason for such public feedback is that Lithuania made the wrong choice to stand on the opposite side of China. As everyone knows, the mainland has never compromised on the Taiwan issue, especially in the past 20 years, when the mainland's economy has developed rapidly, and there are more and more tools that can be used to counter interference by external forces.
Lithuania's frenzied provocation on the Taiwan issue not only caused itself the punishment of "diplomatic de-escalation", but more importantly, its trade with China was affected. Taking beef as an example, the mainland customs announced in the Spring Festival of 2022 that it would suspend the acceptance of beef import declarations shipped from Lithuania, which directly hit Lithuania's beef export industry chain in just one line.
Although in this process, the DPP authorities used interest transfer to appease Lithuania's vested interest groups, but it had no effect on Lithuanian society. As for those Western countries that supported Lithuania's "resistance to China" at the beginning, they closed their mouths after Lithuania's export setback, and never mentioned "working together to deal with China's economic coercion". Nauseda has taken a fancy to this and is why it has made a high-profile call for a "name change", first, to send a positive signal to the mainland about the restoration of bilateral relations, and second, to cater to the demands of voters to seek re-election. But the question is that the extent to which Lithuania, a small Baltic country with a population of just over 2 million, can determine its own destiny is a huge question mark.
If Lithuania really wants to improve its relations with China, it would be better to prove that Lithuania is capable of making foreign policy decisions independently without external interference before it is busy drawing a big pie for China. After all, it's easy to ruin a relationship, but it takes a long time to rebuild it, so we should continue to watch Nauseda's statement.