Gintautas Paluckas, the Social Democratic Party’s candidate for prime minister, says his government would seek to restore full diplomatic relations with China, repairing the rift caused by Taiwan opening a representation in Vilnius.
“Having normal relations is certainly an aspiration because the EU – even though relations with China will not be rosy, they will argue about the economy, about tariffs, about protectionist measures [...] – but the EU is trying to maintain diplomatic relations,” Paluckas said in an interview with BNS on Friday.
“We cannot fall out of this context and call it leadership,” he added.
Lithuania’s ties with China soured in 2021 after the outgoing government invited Taiwan to open a representative office under the name of “Taiwanese” rather than “Taipei”. Beijing called it a violation of the One-China policy and downgraded its diplomatic relations with Lithuania and imposed trade restrictions.
Asked whether Lithuania would seek the return of its ambassador to Beijing and the return of the Chinese ambassador to Vilnius, Paluckas said: “Absolutely yes.”
In his words, however, the normalisation of relations would be pursued “without humiliating ourselves, falling to our knees and begging for anything”.
“We are a sovereign country, we have no dependency on China and nobody is trying to create one, but diplomatic relations are valuable. And one truly needs to have them,” the Social Democrat said.
Lithuania made a “grave diplomatic mistake” by allowing Taiwan to open a Taiwanese-named representative office in Vilnius, he said. Paluckas, however, refrained from saying whether he would ask Taipei to change the name if Beijing demanded it.
“Let’s not speculate, we don’t know what the Chinese will ask for. We don’t know the real situation,” Paluckas said.
In Lithuanian and English, the name of the Taipei representative office in Vilnius uses the word “Taiwanese”. Meanwhile, in Chinese, it used the name “Taiwan”.
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