Chapter 5: Conclusion
5.2. Implications of the Research
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is currently being discussed and improved, other political aspects come as the secondary goal that goes along with the economic goals.
5.2. IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH
Based on my research, I believe that the chosen methodology is suitable for this thesis. The neoliberal approach suggests the importance of mutual trade and economic cooperation that is not managed by the state. Currently, we can see that newest political approach of Czech government is very supportive of liberal
economy, Czech president has shown a good evidence of his liberal approach, and the importance of the economy to a future state’s development.
There is a common consensus among the EU that all member countries should follow the same path when it comes to cooperation with countries outside of the EU.
The Czech Republic also adapted “the EU approach” when it comes to new or
adjusted treaties with non-European countries. There has been a significant change in Czech-China relations, because now the Czech Republic, as the EU member, can serve as a bridge to Europe for China’s investments. Since joining the EU, Czech signed bilateral agreements with China involving economic, academic and other forms of cooperation, for instance, in the year 2005, the Czech Prime Minister signed 14 bilateral agreements with China. The research proved that there have been recent positive changes in Czech-China relations, especially on the economic field. Those changes lead to more tight and equal economic cooperation between Czech and China.
As the matter of the level of analysis, if I divide it into three groups:
individual level, system level, and social level; in my opinion, the most important level is the individual, which is a President in this case. In Czech-China relations analysis from the Czech perspective a President plays a crucial role, therefore this research emphasized mainly on Presidents.
There is an obvious interest of the Czech Republic in greater cooperation with China, especially from the economic perspective. The current Czech President
conducted several visits to China to strengthen mutual relationship. Some evidence
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from 2004 shows that Czech side of this relationship still seems unsatisfied with this state of the relationship, because there are obvious advantages for Chinese side, especially when it comes to trade. Import to Czech from China has been steadily growing since 2000, after 2004 a growth was rapid, then there was a slight decrease;
however, it went up again after 2013. Export from Czech to China experienced similar, but a slower path. It took longer to Czech side to speed up export growth rate than to China; however, after 2009 data show an obvious increase in Czech export to China.
From the non-economic perspective, the biggest changes have been
discovered in the question of Taiwan. Recently, the situation was stable, until the year 2014 when the Czech President Zeman visited Beijing where he stated that Taiwan is a part of China. Changes that Czech-China and Czech-Taiwan political relations have undergone are significant. It went from active criticism of China, and support of democratic Taiwan to stating that Taiwan is a part of China while having the Czech President visiting Beijing. China is becoming more and more important for the Czech Republic, as most importantly an economic cooperation is increasing. The current Czech President recently visited China and Chinese officials went for an official visit to the Czech Republic – that is a good proof of an active cooperation and positive foreign relations between China and Czech. Most recently China’s President Xi Jinping visited Czech as the first Chinese president in the history of Czech-China relations. We can definitely see that as a starting point for improvement the mutual relationship; this visit was not only exceptional from Czech standpoint, it was also unique because, during President Xi’s visit to Czech, the Czech Republic was the only European country he visited during this trip. This is a very interesting step forward in the Czech diplomacy, as the Czech Republic, the country often considered less significant in Europe due to her historical connection with the Soviet Union, was chosen to be President Xi’s the only European destination. Besides that, the Czech capital Prague is about to sign a sister city agreement with Beijing as the first V4 country to do so. There have not been noticed a lot of public complaints during past years related to Czech-China relations. First, complaints were heard regarding aforementioned sister city agreement between Prague and Beijing, because this agreement will contain a clause about Prague’s support of One-China Policy. Even
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bigger criticism occurred during President Xi’s visit when numerous voices raised a question concerning human rights. However, official government’s statement towards China remains positive. Even though an attitude of the Czech society is negative towards China, which was observed especially during the visit of Xi Jinping to Prague, I do not see it as a big turnover. Findings show that there was lack of interest in China in past, nowadays there is a trend of negativity towards China to some extent, this negativity is a change from neutrality rather than from positivity. China was always something unknown, sometimes even mysterious for Czech public, current negativity carried out might be influenced by Czechs’ dislike for local
government or because of an impression that have been spread by a Czech media that the country present herself as inferior in relation with China.
I believe tourism should be mentioned as one of the factors that influence Czech-China relations. For the Czech Republic, tourism is an important source of money income. A new opened direct flight between Prague and Beijing will also increase the number of incoming tourists. Chinese tourists are not only coming to Czech in very high number, but they are also willing to spend more money than many other tourists. It is obvious that Czech is becoming more attractive for Chinese, which is very desirable in the current situation, especially considering a lowering number of Russian tourists coming to Czech. Another factor that shows us the level of
understanding and prosperity of mutual relations is the number of foreign people living in the country. A number of Chinese people living in Czech increases since 2004, by 2007 increase became more stable and slowed down, on the other hand, the number of applicants for over 90 days’ visa decreased. An increase in Chinese living in Czech proves a raising interest of Chinese and China in general in Czech.
Lastly, I consider China’s soft power as one of the factors influencing relations between China and other countries. In the Czech case, Confucius institute can influence Czech-China relations, especially because of the capital they can afford to use. To support Confucius institute in Olomouc, China provided $100,000 USD, 3,000 books, and teaching materials. Confucius institute serves as an educational platform and they also offer consulting services; however, I did not discover that Czech businesses are using a service of the Confucius institute. They prefer already existing platforms and services provided or recommended by the Czech Ministry of
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Foreign Affairs, for instance, CzechTrade, Czech Invest, or Embassy of the Czech Republic in Shanghai and in Beijing.
The Czech Republic during past three presidencies experienced various stages of the relationship with China. The more recent time we examine, the more
involvement of the importance of economic cooperation we can discover. Economic and academic cooperation are ongoing between Czech and China. Based on my findings, I conclude that current political relations between the Czech Republic and the People’s Republic of China are on a very positive path; Czech government officials are personally trying to improve those relations by making official visits to China. After comparing the periods before and after Czech joined the EU, changes in Czech-China relations have been very significant, especially from the President’s stance that is important for foreign relations. If we look at the most recent situation, the biggest improvement seems to occur during past few years especially since 2013 when Miloš Zeman became the Czech President. President Zeman is very open to the cooperation with China and he is actively participating in its improvement. The first Czech President Havel was more of an opposite to this stance – he, in my opinion, valued human rights and democracy over good foreign relations economic
cooperation with China. Second Czech President Klaus’s support leaned rather towards the United States of America, but he also started the reevaluation of Czech-China relations, and he supported and idea of mutual closer cooperation, especially in the economic field.
As an example, in Czech-China relations the Czech Presidents promotes Czech trade, businessmen and companies during his talks with China’s high government officials, which has become a pattern during past decade. Therefore, I argue that the current situation of Czech-China relations requires the involvement of politicians, and improvement of foreign relations, in order to strengthen the economic cooperation. Then, it will be possible for a trade to become more independent from the government bodies, as it is according to the neoliberal society; however, that is still yet to come, in my opinion, the Czech Republic is not in this stage yet.
China does not only want to have a good relationship with the EU, she also wants to have an influence over countries that have a power within the EU, which, in
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my opinion, will further determine which of V4 will become the most important for China.
Based on historical facts and discovered data, there is no particular bond between the Czech Republic and the PRC that would not be observed in cases of other Visegrád group countries. Moreover, Czech could be seen as an even less important V4 country from China’s perspective, since China’s biggest share V4 of investment, over 6 billion USD, goes to Hungary. Czech, on the other hand, receives only 100 million USD of Chinese investment. The Czech Republic agreed to be a part of OBOR, which will make the country more important to China. Based on my findings, if I were to evaluate how important each V4 country is for China from the economic perspective, I would say: Hungary > Poland > the Czech Republic >
Slovakia. Hungary has the highest number of China’s investment, as well as the biggest Chinese population among V4. Slovakia, on the other hand, has no or very little investment, based on different sources.
Czech Republic might not be the biggest V4 China’s investment partner;
however, it was the Czech Republic who the PRC president Xi visited this Spring as the only European country. Czech is still a strategic partner for China, a tighter relationship with Czech China has, the greater influence in EU can China perform.
There may not have been any particular interests in Czech at the beginning, but because of efforts made mostly by the Czech President, I believe that this situation is changing.
Looking to the past, as I mentioned before, Czech-China relations have changed rapidly, not only considering growing economic exchange but also on political matters. I believe that the Czech President of the Czech history has a very significant influence on the development of those mutual relations. Based on the Czech Constitution, the President a) represents the country externally, b) negotiates and ratifies international treaties, c) receives heads of diplomatic missions. It is not crucial for this research to evaluate the first Czech President because his period ended before Czech joined the EU. However, I decided to examine the first President Havel in the overview of this research, because if we understand his idealistic way of practicing foreign politics, then we can better evaluate how realistic was his
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successor, and then later understand the big turnover of Czech-China relations with current President’s liberalistic approach that is thoroughly examined in my research. I consider the current Czech President as the one who has made the biggest efforts, compared to his two predecessors, to strengthen ties with China. As I mentioned above, Zeman has been very active during his talks with the President Xi Jinping in order to make his home country more attractive to China.
I believe that a reason why the Czech Republic wants to improve the
relationship with China is an economic interest. When we look back to the past, when the Czech Republic was a new country, her enthusiasm about China was not so great among society, as well the government body, especially a President. We can see a huge change nowadays when not only the President but also Czech society becomes more aware of China. Reasons are obvious– a search for new markets and
strengthening economic cooperation with a big strong country.
Czech President can influence foreign relations not only in a positive way.
Finding of my research show among Czech society, there are people who dislike China and there might be a linkage to a dislike of their President. I would call it a trend that Czech people do not like their politicians and the President is no exception.
President Klaus has the United States as his preferable foreign power to establish close relations with, during his presidency, there was a dislike towards the USA.
Current President Zeman chose China as the most important foreign power to establish good relations with and again, there is a voice among the Czech society expressing a dislike towards China. It is hard to predict whether with a new President people will change their opinion about China, or not. Positive thing is that not
everybody supports this dislike, if I use President Xi’s visit to Czech, there have been a good number of China’s supporters who welcomed him in Prague with flags and smiles on their faces.
As I see it, the biggest concern for Czech-China relations is that a relationship between those two countries is affected by issues such as discussion about human rights, particularly the issue of Tibet or Taiwan. So far, I observe that the current government seems fond of China, renouncing the possibility of bringing up the aforementioned issue.
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I have examined that Czech-China relations and Czech-Taiwan relations are influencing each other; however, there is no automatic direct linkage between those two when it comes to a negative influence. I have discovered a linkage in the occurrence of (Czech’s) open commenting on Cross-Strait relations, while favoring one side, the other side of the Taiwan Strait expresses their disagreement, in the past when such a case occurred, open disagreement came from China’s side.
In this research, I concentrated on Political and Economic cooperation
between the Czech Republic and the People’s Republic of China. I sincerely hope that this research will provide an original contribution to knowledge about the Czech-China foreign relations. During my research I have discovered that there are still many potential questions regarding Czech-China relations that have not been
answered, therefore, further research would be desirable. I examined this relationship rather from Czech perspective, the next research could look at the same topic by using Chinese sources in order to find out, how is this relationship evaluated from China’s side.
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