The Chinese visit of the Czech Republic – PLSC 359: Global Governance

The Chinese president Xi Jinping arrived in Prague, Czech Republic on Monday, March 28, 2016, to stay for a three day long visit. This was the very first visit of the head of the communist country in the Czech Republic, a post-communist country.

The purpose of the state visit was symbolic but also a lot of treaties were signed and a strategic partnership was initiated. The visit gained a lot of public attention, both positive and negative. The state officials even declared state of emergency before the Chinese president arrived as there was a great risk of a terrorist attack, especially since it was that soon after the attack in Brussels.

Hundreds of Chinese people were welcoming the president of their home country and Chinese flags flooded the city. There were also many critics of the meeting of our head of state with the communist president and for example a flag of Tibet raised in a window had to be taken down, the official reason was that a shooter could hide behind it. Then over all, all Tibetan and Uyghur flags were prohibited.

This visit raised some questions within the Czech society but these could be asked anywhere in the world. Actually, there are two types of questions.

The first type is connected with human rights. As it is known, China violates the human rights and creating partnerships with such regime might indicate that you don’t mind that kind of treatment of citizens. One can then ask – do we really live in a world where economic interests take precedents over human rights or well-being of human beings? Yes. But do we want that?

The other type of questions is related to the power of president. The current president of the Czech Republic, Milos Zeman, is the first president tobe elected directly by all the people and for many, he is only one big embarrassment. He is a drunk hanging out with Vladimir Putin and drinking vodka. Now by befriending with Xi Jinping, drinking beer and stating

before the end of the visit that “every beautiful meeting must end”, he is destroying all the work done by Vaclav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic who was a devoted campaigner for human rights and made the Czech Republic quite famous for it.
Not much better than the last president, Vaclav Klaus, who made himself famous for stealing a pen during a state visit in Chile. Furthermore, the president is publicly saying his personal opinions on international affairs rather than sticking with official foreign policy and creating even more chaos. What can you do about a president who is doing whatever he wants when he was elected by all the people? How can you prevent him from behaving irresponsibly and shaming the whole nation?

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Aileen Echelberger says:

April 30, 2016 at 12:16 pm

Democracy seems to have had a rough start in the Czech Republic, if the first freely elected president is doing what he wants at the cost of the citizens who elected him. No one political process is foolproof, and corruption can be harder to combat in a transitioning system. Hopefully more trustworthy leaders will elected in the future, however, because relations with countries in Europe are being put to the test as the European Union needs to work on issues of European and global governance together.
The Czech Republic is also an interesting political site, because it seems to straddle the world of East and West. With former political identification as a communist state with close ties to the Soviet Union, and continuingly strong ties to Russia and China, the Czech Republic seems overwhelmingly Eastern. Still, it has been a member of the European Union since 2004 and is also part of NATO. Its geographic location in central Europe makes it accessible from both sides, and surely brings a steady flow of ideas from both east and west.