Evaluation of the Xi Jinping’s Visit to Czech

important for China as her “bridge” to the EU, it is, therefore, an achievement for Czech-China relations that the Czech Republic will participate.

2.4.1. EVALUATION OF THE XI JINPING’S VISIT TO CZECH

To be able to evaluate a relationship between Czech and China, we not only have to look into official documents, but it is also important to find out society’s opinion. People in the Czech Republic do not directly influence foreign politics, but they do have many ways how to express their feelings towards government’s acts or foreign powers. To evaluate how the Czech society feels about the People’s Republic of China, I will take as the example the visit of the President Xi Jinping, which happened this March 2016.

China’s President Xi Jinping arrived in the Czech Republic on March 28th, the main reason of his visit was to strengthen economic ties. On the 1st day of Xi’s stay was scheduled a meeting with President Zeman, his Czech counterpart. Xi and Zeman planted a Ginko Biloba tree together in Lány⁵. The 2^nd day started at the Prague Castle⁶, where Xi was officially welcomed by the Czech President. The whole ceremony was complemented by firing 21 artillery salvoes of honor. Afterward, agreements were signed. In the afternoon, President Xi met with the Czech

parliament, Prime Minister and Prague mayor. The 3rd day was devoted to a business meeting of Czech and Chinese President and Czech and Chinese businessmen. In the afternoon, Chinese President left the Czech Republic. Czech media covered the visit rigorously. However, most of the news only described the agenda. If there was any evaluation of the visit, it was rather negative.

There were also indirect ways how to undermine positive perception about China. For instance, 28.03.2016, the day when President Xi arrived in Czech, was released an article by Česká televize⁷ with the headline “Mučení, popravy, obchod s

5 Castle Lány is a summer house of the Czech President since 1921, this place is not open to public.

6 The Prague Castle was built around 880, since the 10^th century the castle became an official residence of a head of Czech lands, currently it is the official residence of the Czech President.

7 Česká televize is the first public Czech TV station established in 1992. The TV station is not responsible for obligations of the state and the state is not liable for obligations of Česká televize (Česká televize, 1996–2016).

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orgány. Špiclování, cenzura a represe. I to je současná Čína” (Netočný, 2016).

Translated into English: ‘Torturing, executions, trade with organs. Spying, censorship, repression. That is also nowadays China’. First sentences of the article are: ‘To the Czech Republic is coming to Xi Jinping, the President of the country where every year the courts charge with a death penalty at least as many people, as there is executed in all other states together. The Czech President Miloš Zeman welcomed with all special honors the first man of the People’s Republic of China, the head of state where torturing during an interrogation and violent forcing to a conviction to a crime is practiced on daily basis’, for the purpose of this research, I translated original text into English (Netočný, 2016). I find this article very controversial, especially because it was published through official website of Česká televise, which serves as a reliable source of information since the establishment of the country. I do not want to create an impression that in the Czech Republic, Česká televize TV station is

controlled by the government or that it should be. I am trying to point out that if such a big player in Czech media, as the Česká Televize is, criticizes China so openly and so severely, there must be a big split within the Czech society, or maybe even a majority who do not favor China. And it is obvious that Česká televise as a major Czech TV station supports this idea of dislike.

The Czech branch of the Amnesty International⁸ (AI) wrote an open letter to the Czech President Zeman regarding President Xi’s visit to Czech. I decided to evaluate this letter in the section where I examine Czech society’s opinion, because this letter was written in the Czech language by Mark Martin, Director at Amnesty International Czech Republic, therefore, there can be a direct influence on Czech people. Before I closely uncover what is in this letter, it is important to remind that an average Czech person has limited access to information. The reason for it is that majority of Czech people do not read English, or any other foreign language news; we have to remember that while evaluating media’s presentation of any political act in the Czech environment. Every news can become influential, even though they do not necessarily need to be based on true facts, which is hard to uncover unless some other Czech media or person attacks it, because a person who speaks only a Czech language

8 Amnesty International is an NGO focusing on a human rights. Amnesty International describe themselves as a global movement involving more than 7 million people from 150 countries and territories (Amnesty International, 2016).

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has limited unbiased easily accessible sources.I believe that Czech people often rely on Czech media coverage due to a language barrier, therefore it is easier to spread a (negative) message among a society.

Back to the AI; in their open letter they are asking Zeman to be aware of the situation of human rights’ violation in China, they state 2 examples pointing out various human rights’ violation, AI is also openly asking President Zeman to take these facts into consideration during the negotiations with his Chinese counterpart, AI also mentions that the Czech Republic has a history of a communist repression and that the country now has to support democracy and distance from a repression of human rights (Martin, 2016). Czech still remembers a history of communism and repression that harmed a society, there is a common animosity towards

non-democratic countries, including China. I remember once when I attended a Chinese performance by The National Circus of People’s Republic of China, tickets were sold out, everyone was enjoying a performance, until acrobats came on the stage wearing Chinese military uniforms. When uniformed acrobats were spotted by Czech

audience, nearly one third of Czechs stood up and as a sign of protest immediately left the theatre. Many of them saying ‘I will not support a communism’ while leaving.

This experience showed me that if we take a sample of several hundreds of Czech people from various backgrounds with no obvious dislike towards China, otherwise they would not attend a performance, I assume, if they see any linkage to a

communism of the country they suddenly feel strongly offended and unsupportive of China.

There was some dislike expressed among the Czech society towards a choice of dates. Some argue that China chose Easter Monday on purpose to see how far they can go. It is unusual to accept foreign guests during our National Holiday. I do not see it as the strategic move made by China to see whether Czech will accept it obey. Such an opinion would be misleading, especially in light of circumstances that followed after Xi’s visit to Czech. It is known that China’s President visited the Czech Republic as the only European country during his trip, but he did not visit Czech as the only country – Xi, after he left Czech, he went to the United States where, as it was scheduled, he attended Nuclear Security Summit in Washington. As I already mentioned, Xi arrived in Czech on Monday, March 28th, after he left the Czech

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Republic, he went directly to the USA and arrived there on Wednesday, March 30th.

Because of Xi’s following visit to the USA, I do not see a timing of the visit to Czech as interfering of Easter celebration.

Expressions of disagreement with this visit were made not only by netizens.

There were several protests on Prague streets. On Tuesday, protesters gathered to express their support for Falun Gong group, which is banned in China; there were hundreds of Tibetan supporters waving the flag of Tibet to express their support of human rights (Janicek, 2016). There were also some riots that had to be stopped with an assistance of police when China’s supporters were about to meet with

aforementioned protesters. Czech contributor of the U.S. News wrote that “in the evening (Tuesday), a mass for the victims of the Chinese communist regime was scheduled to be served in a Catholic church in Prague” (Janicek, 2016).

Another controversy appeared about billboards that were displayed across Prague. Each of those identical billboards had a sentence in Chinese and in Czech, both of those saying “Welcome to the Czech Republic”. Many people expressed their disagreement with the sign saying that translation do not match and Chinese version is made to please Chinese side and to show our obedience and a lower position in the relationship with China. I believe that sign was translated correctly and everything was overmedialized to create negative mood among Czech society soon before Chinese President’s arrival. Czech sentence says “Vítejte v České republice!”

(Mazancová, 2016), literally: Vítejte - welcome / v – in (to) / České - Czech / republice - republic. Chinese sentence says “捷克共和国欢迎您!” (Mazancová, 2016), literally: 捷克 - Czech / 共和国 - Republic / 欢迎 - welcomes / 您 – you.

Translation is slightly different, Czech sentence could have been changed to “Czech Republic welcomes you”, but that would not change a meaning of the sentence. This shows that criticism of billboards was rather escalated with the intention to create a negative impression about the China’s President visit. Regarding this issue, a

questionnaire by the Czech newspapers Lidovky.cz (Figure 1) was created. From all 1213 Czech respondents, 1074 were not satisfied with billboards and flags that were decorating Czech capital. People saw it as a sign of the Czech Republic trying to ingratiate herself with China. Some thought it was not necessary to express such a

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gratitude for Xi’s visit to Czech and that it made Czech seem less important and less equal to China within their mutual relationship.

Figure 1: Do you like how Prague is decorated to welcome the Chinese President?

Do you like how Prague is decorated to welcome the Chinese President?

Yes 94 No 1074 No specific answer. 45 Source: Mazancová, 2016