Taiwanese Foreign Minister Lin Chia-lung, accompanied by a delegation of businesspeople, is visiting Lithuania on Wednesday and Thursday. Although no official meetings with Lithuanian government ministers are on the agenda, the Taiwanese delegation is meeting with some parliament members.
The foreign minister and his delegation have declined to comment to the Lithuanian media, but, according to the Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius, they are interested in drone manufacturers and are meeting Lithuanian business representatives.
However, there was also a dinner planned with some members of the Lithuanian parliament, Seimas, on Wednesday evening.
“The most important thing for us is to bring together at the political level, to open up certain markets and to show that this cooperation would be welcome at the state level,” conservative MP Matas Maldeikis told LRT TV on Wednesday. “Now it is up to the entrepreneurs. I have received a lot of contacts, Lithuanian contacts, who wanted to work with the Taiwanese in this field.”
Several companies in Lithuania produce drones, including military ones. They have been shipped and tested in Ukraine.
Moreover, Lithuanian manufacturers are seeking to phase out any Chinese components from their products, a dependency that Taiwan is also interested in eliminating.
“One of the areas where I think there is a lot of potential is cooperation between Ukraine, Lithuania, and Taiwan,” says Social Democrat MP and defence minister candidate Dovilė Šakalienė. “Because we really need to combine technology, mass production capabilities, and battlefield experience, so that we can have the very best products that meet the requirements of today’s warfare.”
Giedrimas Jeglinskas, the new chairman of the Seimas Committee on National Security and Defence and a representative of the Democrats “for Lithuania” party, stresses that Taiwan is a very important partner.
“This is an important partner for us and we need to continue to build relations. It is very important to meet. We need to understand that this is a manufacturing centre, a manufacturing axis, not only in Asia but globally. It is one of the technological leaders and the more ties we are able to establish with Taiwan, the better it is for our economy and our defence,” he said.
The sentiment is shared by opposition MPs too. Liberal Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen, who was Seimas speaker in the previous parliament, met the then Taiwanese foreign minister, Joseph Wu, when he was visiting Lithuania last year.
Čmilytė-Nielsen, who now sits on the Committee on National Security and Defence, says the opposition will continue the course it set out last term while in the position.
“There are already parliamentary groups, friendships, and links. I myself have set up a group to foster links with the democracies of the Indo-Pacific and, naturally, Taiwan is on that list,” she said.
Lithuania’s outgoing government got into a diplomatic spat with China after the opening of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius. Beijing downgraded diplomatic relations with Vilnius and temporarily imposed trade sanctions.
Prime Minister-designate Gintautas Paluckas and President Gitanas Nausėda have suggested that they will work to improve relations with China, at least to the extent of restoring normal consular services or diplomatic ties like those between Beijing and Washington.
Šakalienė, who is tipped to be Lithuania’s next defence minister, has personally received sanctions from China and has her own views on the proposed détente.
“Taiwan has a lot of opportunities for us to work together, so I would like us to develop that cooperation, and we will see how that cooperation will develop in the next few weeks,” she said.
All politicians quoted in this report confirmed that they were going to meet with the Taiwanese delegation.
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