Chapter 1: Introduction
1.6. Methodology
1.6.2. Data Analysis
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government and the Czech statistical office will be used. The intention is to have a narrow research field so that a thorough examination can be performed.
1.6.2. DATA ANALYSIS
To analyze and interpret my results, I will use specific theoretical perspectives in order to analyze data and explain observed facts. Those theoretical perspectives were made by scholars that have an advanced experience in Czech-China relations or Czech foreign politics, as well as by scholars focusing on neoliberal approaches.
Literature research of primary and secondary sources will be done very carefully and thoroughly in order to provide a background for further data analysis.
To analyze data, I will use current articles written by recognized and relevant serious newspapers, as well as other related researches. I will also evaluate data with a help of the previous research done on the Czech-China relations and other work examining related topics will be used. Data will be also used to create graphs that demonstrate the development of economic exchange between Czech and China.
One of the most significant Czech researchers dealing with China issues is Rudolf Fürst. Rudolf Fürst is a Research Fellow in International Research Institute, Prague. His specialization is China, Czech-China relations, or European Union-People’s Republic of China relations. Both of his works Česko-čínské vztahy: Od bezradnosti k aktivní politice (2004) and Czech Perceptions of China: Between Matter-of-Factness and Imagination, Between Orientalism and Occidentalism (2005) provide a thorough description of the political relationship between the Czech
Republic and the People’s Republic of China. Fürst also explains some economic issues between those two countries. Fürst’s work is crucial for examining Czech-China relationship, therefore, both of aforementioned studies will be used as a secondary literature. Those two studies will provide a material for a comparison of new data researched in this paper and already existing evaluation of Czech-China relations after that new data will be analyzed based on Fürst’s approach and neoliberal perspective. Fürst’s work provides certain guidelines how to examine Czech-China relations.
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Czech Foreign Ministry and other Czech government bodies provide full statements of government officials and reports, which are much needed while researching foreign policy of the Czech Republic. To understand Czech-China foreign relations, data provided by Czech Foreign Ministry are sufficient for those who look for raw data with no further analysis. This research is trying to complement provided data with a possible explanation based on other supporting literature.
Sources used for the analysis of data provided by the Czech government are online articles that deal with topics related to each particular government report or data.
Those online articles are mainly retrieved from the Czech News Agency, PraguePost, Hospodářské noviny (Economic Newspapers) or Parlamentní listy (Parliament Newspapers). These online newspapers provide relevant and serious opinions of Czech specialists and public, as well as interviews with government officials. Foreign online websites such as the Diplomat or the Economist are used during analyzing to provide a wider spectrum of the way of presenting the Czech-China foreign relations and analyses of other specialists.
Pick and Handl in their book Zahraniční politika České republiky 1993-2004:
Úspěchy, problémy a perspektivy (2004) describe nature of the Czech foreign politics. Pick and Handle created this book as a collection of sections written by various authors. They examine successes, problems and perspectives of the Czech Republic in the international field. Pick and Handl provide a good structure how to examine Czech foreign politics. They focus on Czech foreign politics globally, their examined topics are security, neighboring countries, industrial cooperation, or human rights. In the chapter about approaches towards selected partners and regions Pick and Handl specifically talk about the United States, Russia, and China. There have not been written any similar book in the Czech environment focusing on the later time period. I believe that Pick and Handl made a great contribution to the scholarly work about Czech foreign politics, and also Czech-China foreign relations; however, I see a missed opportunity in describing the later development, especially of Czech-China relations while focusing more on economic cooperation and attempts of its
strengthening. Pick and Handl’s work will be used for analyzing recent official data collected after the book was published and that are relevant to their work’s research.
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Combination of new data and already existing knowledge on Czech-China relations will provide more accurate analysis.
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CHAPTER 2:
POLITICAL COOPERATION
2.1. OVERVIEW
In 1919 official recognition between Czechoslovakia and China took place, China was recognized as the Republic of China. In 1930 official relations between Czechoslovakia and China were established, Czechoslovakia and the Republic of China signed an agreement about a mutual cooperation. One year later, the first Czechoslovakian embassy was opened in Shanghai. In 1933 the Chinese embassy opened its office in Prague. Both, Shanghai and Prague offices were closed in 1939 when the occupation of Czechoslovakia started, official relations between Republic of China and Czechoslovakia were suspended. Relations were re-established in 1941, the embassy was re-opened in 1944. On October 4th, 1949 Czechoslovakia, as one of the first countries, officially recognized the People’s Republic of China as the only Chinese government and suspended relations with Kuomintang at the same time. In 1993 the People’s Republic of China recognized the Czech Republic as a sovereign independent country.
China was maintaining good relations with Czech side until 1989. After that, there was an obvious cooling down of mutual relations and no tries from the Chinese side to strengthen them. To support that, Pick (2004) provides following facts: The last Chinese high-level official who visited Czech was Zhao Ziyang in 1987; Czech Premiers visited China several times – Čalfa3 in 1991, Klaus in 1994, Zeman in 1999.
Klaus went to China again in 2004; however, that time as the Czech President. Zeman as well visited China as the Czech President; it was in 2014 and 2015. It has been 28 years since when the last Chinese official came to Czech; as we will discuss in the following paragraph; the year 2016 seems to be promising in this matter.
3 Marián Čalfa visited China in 1991 as the Premier of Czechoslovakia. Čafla was a Slovakian, but after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia he remained in Prague, Czech Republic.
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During Havel presidency, people were very actively engaged in politics, they were interested mostly in domestic politics, but they were also more aware of foreign politics. The reason for it was that when Havel became a President of the Czech Republic in 1993, the country was a “brand new”. After the soviet occupation, people were enthusiastic about their new democratic country. As many could expect, after democratization, people as a society were leaning towards democratic thinking, equality, and human rights. Because the President, as well as the society, had strong feelings for democracy after the establishment of the new democratic country - the goal they successfully fought for, there was a relative lack of interest in strengthening relations with those countries, which did not share and honor same values. Fürst (2005) argues that attitudes towards Chinese in Czechoslovakia are hard to trace because back then everything was politicized and propaganda was working in the full force. Another problem that he mentions is that there is not enough study about China done during the Czechoslovakia period. For this reason, it is very difficult to make any comparative study in a range more than 20 years. Even nowadays there are not many scholars in the Czech Republic who are producing work focused on political or economic aspects of Czech-China relations. After the revolution in 1989 and the establishment of the Czech Republic in 1993, Czech people under a new democratic wave focus more on the freedom and human rights. Havel, as an influential person not only for the Czech politics but also for the Czech society, did believe that democracy and human rights are more important than good foreign relations with a bigger and stronger country. It is apparent that currently the Czech Republic is experiencing the completely different environment.
After 1993 we can trace various criticism of China. Fürst’s (2005) findings show that even then, there was a big group of supporters of China, especially among businessmen; some of them became politicians in Czech ministries or involved in Czech diplomacy. People, who already had established their connection in China before the Czechoslovakia’s peaceful dissolution, were fond of China. There are no doubts that China had its supporters in Czechoslovakia before 1989, and it would be easy for the same people to keep favoring China even after 1989 resp. 1993,
especially if those people remained influential. Novák (2001) talks about the change of political regime in Czechoslovakia and about forming of political parties and the
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political situation in 1991, from his article it is obvious that often the same people remained on relatively similarly powerful posts even after the aforementioned period.
It is, therefore, very likely that China had the very same supporters in Czechoslovakia as later in the Czech Republic.
As the years went by, the Czech society became used to the status quo, democracy was not any longer something people would have to fight for, it became something that was there with no efforts needed. During past few years, the society sees the importance in a wellbeing maintained through money. It is important for the society to have a country, which can establish trade and economic ties with other preferably richer countries. Czech now sees the opportunity, besides others, in China.
As neoliberalists suggest, economic cooperation comes in the first place. As soon as economic cooperation is prosperous, other spheres of Czech-China relations are also very positive in terms of sustainability and growth. As mentioned before, it is a current goal of the Czech government body to boost an economic cooperation with China, as well as to maintain and improve overall political relations.
About the more current situation, Fürst (2005) describes the Czech view of China positively as people are fascinated by the development. Especially supporters of the Communist Party of Czech and Moravia (KSČM) see China as the model of possible future of non-democratic industrially developed country. Now, the situation seems even more extreme, when Czech’s business interest in China increases. But the conclusion made by Fürst (2005) more than 10 years ago is not entirely applicable anymore. There is a raising criticism of China among Czechs; however, as I see it, this criticism does not come from a particular dislike of China, but more likely of increasing dislike of domestic politics in Czech. There is a trend among Czech public that whoever government favors, people become more aware of that country and a common dislike will spread. During Klaus presidency, Czechs most certainly
experienced dislike towards the United States and the President was often blamed for being too influenced by America. Now, the situation seems very similar to me – people recently expressed dislike towards China and blame President Zeman playing a too submissive role in the Czech-China relationship. That leaves the question whether it really is the foreign country Czech people are unsatisfied with, or if it is the domestic government.
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While Fürst(2005) evaluates the situation after 2000 and closer to 2005, Pick and Handl (2004) took a closer look at years after 1998. In 1998 the resolution about the human rights violation in China and Tibet was accepted by the Czech Senate. Pick and Handl (2004) point out that afterward, Chinese politicians protested against the resolution in the Foreign Senate Committee. In 1990 President Václav Havel invited Dalai Lama to visit Czechoslovakia, Dalai Lama realized his very first visit. As the answer to that happening, China officially protests against the visit (Pick & Handl, 2004). Obviously, the Czech Republic did not take protesting Beijing very seriously, Dalai Lama was invited to Czech again in 1997, 2000, and 2002; every time Dalai Lama met with the Czech President Václav Havel. Following visits in 2003 and 2006 were less official because the new President Václav Klaus did not meet with Dalai Lama, the meeting was again appointed between Dalai Lama and ex-President Václav Havel. In 2008, Dalai Lama during his visit meets the Czech Premier Mirek
Topolánek, same as in 2009. In 2011 Dalai Lama comes to Czech to meet with Václav Havel, who dies one week later. The 10th latest visit was in 2013; that time Dalai Lama does not meet the current Czech President Miloš Zeman (Jurkovič, 2013).
On the example of Dalai Lama’s visits to Czech, we can clearly see the change of Czech politics’ position towards China’s domestic issues. Tibet issue has been far more discussed in Czech environment, compared to the Taiwan issue, and we can see that Czech politicians and public often connect those two. If a current government favors Tibet and supports its future independence, the same argument often applies to Taiwan. That is a reason why Václav Havel was highly appreciated in Taiwan; and the same reason applies to the situation with the current President who believes that Taiwan, as well as Tibet, should remain under China’s control. This topic is further discussed in chapters STRENGTHENING TIES and THE TAIWAN ISSUE.
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2.2. CHINA’S SOFT POWER IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC
To increase influence in other countries, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is using many tools, one of them is China’s soft power. As one of the important soft power tools China is using the concept called “Confucius institute”.
The very first Confucius institute was established in 2004 in Seoul, South Korea.
Confucius institute is a non-profit organization. “Hanban, or the Chinese National Office for Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language, which is responsible for the Confucius Institute program as well as the China Bridge competition, gathered speed quickly. In 2006, a new institute was established every four days and Hanban hopes to have 1,000 institutes by 2020” (Volodzko, 2015). As Paradise (2009) argues, because China is increasingly powerful and her image is often created through her military and economic power, a more favorable tool, which is also friendlier towards other countries was much needed. Paradise (2009) also states that China uses
Confucius institute project to help to explain their aims and goals, to foster the perception of China’s peaceful development and to provide larger transparency about China’s acting.
In 2007 was established the Confucius institute in the Czech city Olomouc.
Since then, Confucius institute called “Konfuciova akademie” provides people the opportunity to study the Chinese language in Czech. Except providing Chinese classes, Confucius institute in Olomouc also conducts training for new Chinese language teachers in the Czech Republic. Those teachers help to promote Chinese culture in Czech environment, especially through playing Chinese movies or offering various speeches; this very particular institute also provides educational and business consulting (Konfuciova akademie, 2015). Everything, what Confucius institute provides, is offered not only to the university students but also to the public or
scholars. To support Confucius institute in Olomouc, China provided $100,000 USD, 3,000 books and teaching materials (Konfuciova akademie, 2015). Confucius institute is indeed a very positive step forward in Czech-China relations; however, if China aims to have 1,000 institutes by 2020, it is obvious that in this particular plan Czech is not any special. This institute is only to promote China, not for China to gain any knowledge about the Czech Republic.
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If Czech businessmen want to succeed in the Chinese market, one of the important much-needed skills is a knowledge of the Chinese language and Chinese culture and environment. However, it did not seem that Czech businesses are using a service of the Confucius institute very much, I have not discovered any record of it. I suggest that they prefer already existing platforms and services provided or
recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for instance, CzechTrade, Embassy of the Czech Republic in Shanghai and Beijing, or the EU project with an aim to help small and medium businesses entering China’s market. These institutions supported by Czech government or the European Union probably seem more reliable to businessmen. Also, besides the Confucius institute, other Czech Universities offer various programs that include Chinese language classes and other related courses.
2.3. THE TAIWAN ISSUE
The Formosa island or Taiwan, further in the research referred as Taiwan, has been an issue for China and her relationship with other countries for a long time.
The Republic of China, originally based in the Mainland China, officially recognized Czechoslovakia in 1919. In 1930 Czechoslovakia and the Republic of China signed an agreement about a mutual cooperation. In 1939 official relations between the Republic of China and Czechoslovakia were suspended, the World War II started. Relations were re-established in 1941, the embassy was re-opened in 1944.
On October 4th, 1949 Czechoslovakia officially recognized the People’s Republic of China, based in the Mainland China, as the only Chinese government and suspended relations with Kuomintang, which was based in Taiwan, in the same time. As the ministry of the Czech Republic states: Relationship between the Czech Republic and Republic of China in Taiwan was re-established after democratic changes in the end of the 20th century. However, newly re-established relations are unofficial and non-governmental. For the cooperation between Taiwan and Czech, there is the Taipei Economic and Cultural office in Prague, which was established in 1992 and the Czech Economic and Cultural office in Taipei established in 1993. So far, the Czech Republic and Taiwan have signed 19 bilateral agreements. The Czech Republic
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established economic ties with Taiwan, and as we can see so far, it does not harm economic cooperation between the Czech Republic and the People’s Republic of China, in fact, both, Czech-China and Czech-Taiwan economic cooperation have been recently improving. China could put some obstacles for Czech to cooperate with her and force Czech businessmen not to interact with Taiwan, but as we can see so far, this is not the case. Taipei Representative Office in EU and Belgium (2013) reported that the trade between the Czech Republic and Taiwan increased from 2004 to 2012; the growth rate in 2012 in comparison with 2004 was 180.8%. “From the period starting from its accession to the EU in 2004 – 2012, the Czech Republic alone attracted nearly as many investors as Germany (about 3.4% of total investment from Taiwan into the EU)” (Taipei Representative Office in EU and Belgium, 2013, p. 6).
This is the evidence of continuously strengthening cooperation between Czech and Taiwan. On the other hand, Czech and China relations are also more and more positive.
The Czech Republic does not recognize Taiwan as a country; however, there are many other ways how Czech and Taiwan boost their mutual relations. For example, Taiwan passport holders can enjoy 90-days visa-free entry to the Czech Republic. In 2011 it was a big step forward when a visa-free entry was introduced.
From January 11th, 2011 Taiwanese people are encouraged to visit the Czech
Republic, as well as other countries within the Schengen area with no need for a visa and complicated paperwork. Taiwanese passport holders are still required to register
Republic, as well as other countries within the Schengen area with no need for a visa and complicated paperwork. Taiwanese passport holders are still required to register