Lithuanian diplomats in China packed up and left Beijing on Wednesday. Fearing for their safety, Vilnius instructed them to return after the Chinese Foreign Ministry asked them to hand in their identification cards, purportedly to change the status of Lithuania's diplomatic representation.
Beijing decided to downgrade Lithuania's diplomatic representation from ‘embassy’ to ‘chargé d'affaires office’, reacting to Vilnius' decision to deepen its relations with Taiwan.
Read more: Beijing wants Lithuania to rename its embassy to ‘chargé d'affaires office’ – FM
The embassy staff received a note from the Chinese government to hand in their accreditation cards on December 7, with the deadline to comply set on December 14.
According to Lithuanian Foreign Minster Gabrielius Landsbergis, Beijing did not inform about any decision, the Lithuanians were simply “told when their identification cards would become invalid”.
“We asked for more time, it's technically difficult for people to leave [so fast], we received no response to our extension request, so people returned [to Lithuania] as quickly as possible,” Landsbergis told BNS earlier this week.
The decision to leave was made for fear what could happen to embassy workers without documents “that guarantee their right to travel and move freely in the city and the country they reside in”, he added.
As the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry informed LRT.lt, four diplomats and one technician employed at the Lithuanian embassy, as well as their family members, left Beijing.
In what The Economist described as “evacuation”, the Lithuanians kept their cards and boarded an Air China flight from Beijing to Paris.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wanf Wenbin commented on Thursday that Lithuania's concerns about the safety of its diplomats were baseless. “The so-called allegations that Lithuanian personnel based in China were concerned about their safety [...] are purely groundless,” he said during a press briefing, adding that Lithuania should “redress its erroneous acts that undermine China’s sovereignty and core interests”, referring to the recent opening of a Taiwanese representation in Vilnius.
Grey zone
It is not entirely clear whether China intended to push Lithuanian diplomats out of the country, according to Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova, head of Riga Stradins University China Studies Centre.
Beijing's move is a reaction to what it sees as Lithuania violating the “One China” principle, she commented to LRT.lt, “but it's not clear whether that still falls into the realm of diplomatic instruments or this is intimidation”.
“This is grey area,” she said.
China has already changed the designation of its own diplomatic representation in Vilnius, from ‘embassy’ to ‘office of the chargé d'affaires’. The new title is now on its official website and the building in Vilnius.
Read more: Lithuanian goods face boycott in China: blocked in ports, taken off shelves, shunned by buyers
Beijing has instructed Lithuania to do the same. However, Froeign Minister Landsbergis and the Lithuanian president's foreign affairs adviser Asta Skaisgirytė said such “unilateral decisions” went against the Vienna Convention.
“It is quite sad that the era of the Lithuanian embassy, for now, in Beijing has ended,” said Bērziņa-Čerenkova. “It has housed many celebrations for the Baltic expats in Beijing and was a Baltic home for all of us. [...] That building that holds so many great memories of Baltic-Chinese interactions is standing empty.”
Lithuania's Foreign Ministry has emphasised that its representation to China will continue operating “remotely”.
