We should also heed the warning of German Minister of Foreign Affairs Heiko Maas who said that if any nation hopes to strike profitable deals with the Chinese, it will later "be surprised to find itself dependent".9
Also lying to themselves are those who think that Latvia is of no interest to China. That's just naà ¯ve because the Chinese propaganda machine is already operating here in full force. What else can you make of articles that contain the line "this information is paid for by the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Latvia"? Articles without this statement also appear in local media outlets in which Chinese officials express their opinion, for instance, the article in NRA titled "NRA Interview with the Ambassador of the People's Republic of China in Latvia: Hardships Reveal True Friendship".10
The reality is that Chinese propaganda is being circulated in the Latvian media space. And I doubt that this is happening free of charge.
Latvia is not the chosen one among the Baltic states - China's approach is that you can never have too much of anything.
It's one thing to spread propaganda, but it takes certain impudence to criticize the intelligence service of another nation for the conclusions it has made. This was recently done by China against Estonia.
At the start of the year, the Chinese Embassy requested that a report by an Estonian intelligence service be corrected. In the report, the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service noted the rapidly rising foreign activities by China aimed at forcing its worldview and norms onto others. "The concept of 'peaceful development' advocated by the previous Chinese president Hu Jintao is used less and less by current Chinese leaders, and instead, they are stressing more and more across the globe the message of China as a power that has come to stay, with others simply forced to adjust to this 'new world order'," can be read in the report.
The authors of the report also wrote: "The potential use of the Chinese foreign investments for political purposes and possible development of the technological dependence is a growing threat to the Estonian security."
The Chinese Embassy responded with: "The Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service is requested, based on facts and truth, to correct its wrong expressions to remove the negative impact. They are advised to make useful and practical efforts to support the development of bilateral relations."11
Thus, we can conclude that China is moving with determination and impudence towards its goal. But what exactly is this goal?
The answer is simple and was said by General Secretary of the UN Antonio Guterres on 22 September 2020 when he opened the annual debate of the General Assembly by warning of a new cold war between the US and China: "We are moving in a very dangerous direction. Our world cannot afford a future where the two largest economies split the globe. A technological and economic divide risks inevitably turning into a geo-strategic and military divide. We must avoid this at all costs."12
He is right, but the reality is that the cold war has already begun. The ineffective international policies have resulted in China's positions strengthening over time. Moreover, the arrogant and near-sighted policies of the USSR and Russia only helped China's military potential to grow. Now, the former teacher has become a distant shadow of its students.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and when a position becomes vacant someone else occupies it. And it doesn't matter how the position becomes vacant, but it would certainly be dumb for someone to give up their position with no reason. In 2017, China revealed that it is participating in counterterrorism operations in Afghanistan in cooperation with Kabul. This confirms the suspicions that China has increased its influence in a country where not so long ago the dominant force was the US/NATO military alliance. Analysts are already asking the question of what this will mean to the global balance of power, Afghanistan itself and stability in Central Asia and the Middle East.13
China is using all the tools available to it to patiently move towards its goal. This doesn't mean that we should forget about Russia - in some ways Russia is less dangerous than China because it doesn't have the amount of resources China does, but Russia is unpredictable which makes it even more dangerous. A single grenade can't cause any significant harm but when it's put in the hands of a monkey - anything can happen.
Then what do we do with China? The answer is simple - we should remember that there are no friends in diplomacy, only interests. To stand against such countries as China and Russia we must use their own methods against them, and all countries standing against them must be united and unyielding.
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