We talked to 30 Czech key govt & business leaders:
We asked the Czech govt & business leaders: How to safeguard Czech democracy and fair business environment from (mainly) Chinese state-organised predators?
For EVC as mainly national security-focused think-tank, we benefited from @CIPEglobal approach (thanks to @eric_hontz & @jeffdlightfoot and their teams) on how to think about defending fair business environment from foreign predators.
What Czech govt insiders + business say:
Here our @_EuropeanValues research team identified the main Chinese economic interference tools, we assessed their main objectives and specific real-life examples.
The list of Chinese malign practices could be long, so we have identified main categories to make sure we see the major gaps in European policy responses:
Europeans are now learning that national security needs to cover economic security since China uses this gateway as a tool for strategic blackmail of European democracies.
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THE BIG GAME: The Chinese Communist Party wants to crush liberal democracies and dominate the world order. China wants to conquer and subdue the free and sovereign island for the same reasons Russia invades and murders the people of Ukraine or Georgia.
Taiwan is our first line of defence against Chinese aggression, the same way Ukraine is facing Russian hostilities.
That is why we are opening our@_EuropeanValues office in Taipei.
Ladislav Zemánek is a Czech neo-Nazi. He was a vice-chairman of a far-right extremist party.
Zemánek traveled to a Russia-organised propaganda trip to Donbas - later got sanctioned by Ukraine.
In 2016,Czech court found him guilty of antisemitic crimes, spreading hate against Jews.Attended team-building meetings of Central European neo-Nazis, like Slovak Marian Kotleba:
Ladislav Zemánek is contractor (his LinkedIn says “analyst”) working for Budapest-based China-CEE Institute. China-CEE Institute is a Chinese-government funded institution paying thousands of EUR to CEE academics for delivering updates on political developments in their countries
EUROPEAN POLICY FAILURE: Why does Russia (and its proxies such as Belarus) keep doing major hostile operations such as using a terrorist-style tactics to kidnap a journalist from a civilian airlines?
Since 2014,Russia has been conducting openly hostile na often murderous operations against European democracies:
from violent coup attempt in Montenegro
assassination operations in UK, Germany or Bulgaria,
to blowing up arms depot on NATO soil in Czech Republic or Bulgaria
It is known that Russia effectively controls the intelligence service (KGB) and armed forces of Belarus.
So the RyanAir kidnapping operation could not happen without Russian state approval or support.
THREAD: Crash course on possible Czech October election winner:
Czech Republic holds general (parliamentary) elections in October. Current governing parties (centrist/populist ANO, corrupted social democrats ČSSD and treasonous Communists KSČM) are all losing the popular support
NOW: ANO dropping to some 20+%, ČSSD and KSČM dancing around 5% threshold needed for entering the next chamber.
POSSIBLE WINNERS: The centrist-liberal coalition (Pirates and Mayors party (STAN)) leading polls with 27-30 %. They are nicknamed “PirSTAN”.
Yesterday,PirSTAN launched their election manifesto which is worth digging into as they might win October elections:
General foreign policy:
Usual EU/NATO priorities,Eastern Partnership + Western Balkans: usual Czech mainstream foreign policy, including future EU memberships)
Foreign Policy Committee of the Czech Senate asks the Czech government to "decrease number of employees of Russian diplomacy in the Czech Republic to one".
In other words: to expel the whole Russian diplomatic presence and keep just the Russian Ambassador.
I LOVE THIS VIEW:
18 Russian intelligence officers (SVR and GRU) are leaving Czech territory right now.
Czech Prime Minister @AndrejBabis & VicePM/Interim For.Minister @jhamacek announced that GRU unit 29155 was "involved" in a 2014 explosion of Czech ammo depot (Vrbětice) which killed two Czech citizen.
DETAILS OF GRU OPERATION, AS EXPLAINED BY CZECH POLICE INVESTIGATION, @okundra reports:
On 13 October 2014, two GRU Unit 29155 officers flew by Aeroflot from Moscow to Prague. They left on 16 October 2014 to Austria and then flew back to Moscow.