Zdeněk Hřib: the Czech mayor who defied China

By refusing to expel a Taiwanese diplomat, the Prague mayor has joined the ranks of local politicians confronting contentious national policies

By Robert Tait in Prague

Zdeněk Hřib of the Czech Republic’s Pirate party.

Zdeněk Hřib had been Prague’s mayor for little more than a month when he came face-to-face with the Czech capital’s complex entanglement with China.
Hosting a meeting with foreign diplomats in the city, Hřib was asked by the Chinese ambassador to expel their Taiwanese counterpart from the gathering in deference to Beijing’s ‘one China’ policy, under which it claims sovereignty over the officially independent state of Taiwan.
Given recent Chinese investments in the Czech Republic, which have included the acquisition of Slavia Prague football club, a major brewery and a stake in a private TV station, the fledgling mayor could have easily agreed. 

Prague city council had, under the preceding mayor, signed a twin cities agreement with Beijing that explicitly recognised the one China policy.
Instead, Hřib refused and the Taiwanese diplomat stayed.
The episode is a rare case of a local politician defying the might of a global superpower while making a principled stand against a national government policy that has promoted Chinese ties.

Hřib has since gone further, demanding Beijing officials drop the clause stating Prague’s support for the one China policy in the 2016 deal and threatening to scrap the arrangement if they refuse.
“This article is a one-sided declaration that Prague agrees with and respects the one China policy and such a statement has no place in the sister cities agreement,” Hřib said in an interview in Prague’s new town hall, close to the city’s historic tourist district, which draws an increasing number of visitors from China.
“The one China policy is a complicated matter of foreign politics between two countries. But we are solving our sister cities relationship on the level of two capital cities.”

Hřib, a 38-year-old doctor who spent a medical training internship in Taiwan, is challenging the Czech president, Miloš Zeman, who has visited China several times, installed a Chinese adviser at his office in Prague castle and declared that he wanted to learn “how to stabilise society” from the country’s communist rulers.
The dispute has catapulted the unassuming Hřib to household name status in Czech politics, helped by Prague’s position as an international cultural draw and its outsize share of national resources.
Hřib’s rise from obscurity is striking because Czech mayors, unlike their US and Polish counterparts, are not directly elected. 

He became mayor of a coalition administration after his Pirate party, a liberal group with roots in civil society, finished second in last October’s municipal elections.
He says he is merely adopting the policy of his party and its two coalition partners in taking decisions that are cooling Prague’s relations with Beijing.

Zdeněk Hřib and Lobsang Sangay at the Old Town Hall in Prague. 

In March, his administration restored the practice of flying the Tibetan flag from Prague’s town hall, reinstating a tradition begun in the era of the Czech Republic’s first post-communist president, Václav Havel, that was dropped by the previous city administration. 

At the same time, in a move tailor-made to infuriate Beijing, Hřib hosted the visiting head of Tibet’s government-in-exile, Lobsang Sangay.
An official visit to the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, followed. 

During the visit, Hřib criticised China for harvesting organs from political prisoners belonging to the Falun Gong movement.
Threats of retaliation came soon afterwards. 

A planned tour of China by the Prague Philharmonia in September is in jeopardy after it rebuffed Beijing’s demands to repudiate the mayor.
Iva Nevoralova, the orchestra’s spokesperson, likened the request to the actions of Czechoslovakia’s former communist regime, which pressured artists to denounce Havel’s dissident Charter 77 movement as the price for being allowed to perform.

Members of the Prague Philharmonia. 

Speaking to the Guardian, Hřib questioned whether Prague’s arrangement with Beijing was a fair relationship and criticised China’s “social scoring” system for good citizenship. 

He suggested that investment from Taiwan, with its western-style democracy and record of technological innovation, offered greater benefit.
The mayor has won praise for restoring the Czech Republic’s image as a champion of human rights and self-determination at a time when its politics have been dominated by the populist messages of Zeman and Andrej Babiš, the anti-immigration billionaire prime minister.
“It is empowering to see that a mayor of Prague can have a principled position, despite large portions of the Czech political establishment being co-opted by the narratives spread by the totalitarian government of China,” said Jakub Janda, executive director of the European Values thinktank, which monitors anti-western influence in Czech politics and beyond.


Jakub Janda@_JakubJanda
THREAD:
CZECH RESISTANCE TO CHINESE HARASSMENT:
We have a good Mayor of Prague. He supports Tibet + Taiwan. When the PRC ambassador tried to force him to have a TW diplomat kicked out of a diplomatic meeting hosted by Prague City Council, he declined.
2,268
8:59 PM - Apr 28, 2019

Jiří Pehe, the director of New York University in Prague, said Hřib was using the mayor’s office to reassert the values of Havel, who died in 2011. 

“Everyone in this country knows that when you support Taiwan and Tibet, you’re saying exactly what Havel used to say,” said Pehe. 

“This was intentional on the part of the Pirate party as soon as he took over Prague. They are saying that the Czech Republic has a special history of fighting against communism and you should respect it.”

The U.S.-China Tech War Is Being Fought in Central Europe

The Czech Republic’s complicated relationship with the Chinese Huawei offers a lesson in the benefits and pitfalls of courting Beijing.

By PHILIP HEIJMANS

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, second from right, examines Huawei technology during a presentation in London in 2015.

PRAGUE—When Chinese dictator Xi Jinping and Czech president Miloš Zeman raised a beer from a terrace overlooking the spires of Prague in 2016, they were hailing an era of deepened economic cooperation: Beijing would invest billions of dollars in the Czech Republic, and Zeman, in turn, would tout China as a business partner for Europe.
Zeman has been a staunch supporter of Beijing ever since, and in particular of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies, promoting the company’s efforts to roll out across the Czech Republic cutting-edge wireless technology known as 5G.
But Huawei’s role here has come under growing domestic scrutiny in recent months, with the country’s cybersecurity agency labeling it a threat. 

That has triggered a political dispute that is, in varying forms, playing out across Central Europe and the wider world. 

It puts the Czech Republic at the center of a geopolitical tug-of-war between the United States, its longtime ally and fellow democracy, and the growing economic heft of China.
With Huawei at the heart of the Trump administration’s wide-ranging trade dispute with China, the Czech Republic’s quandary is a microcosm of a debate raging across Europe—whether to stand with Washington, at the risk of delays in integrating a new technology that could set the course for business in the modern age.
That tension is now set to play out in a very public fashion: The Czech Republic’s prime minister, Andrej Babiš, is to meet with President Donald Trump in the White House this week, just weeks before Zeman heads to Beijing for talks with the Chinese leadership.
“The Czech Republic and many other countries are now sitting in two chairs that are pulling apart,” said Martin Hala, the director of Project Sinopsis, a Prague-based think tank specializing in Chinese relations. 

“This schizophrenic position—when one part of the political establishment is looking east and the other west … will eventually need a resolution. Something will have to give.”
Fifth-generation wireless technology, which is in the early stages of being rolled out around the globe, promises to transform entire industries and economies, and would form the backbone of countries’ communications infrastructures. 

Few companies have both the technical know-how and the global reach to build such systems, though, and Huawei is one of them. 

The company insists it has no official links to China’s government, but officials in an array of countries—including the United States, but also India, New Zealand, and elsewhere—are skeptical. 

In Canada, Huawei’s chief financial officer, who is also the daughter of its founder, faces extradition to the United States on fraud charges.
In Europe, the divisions over Huawei are stark. 

British authorities have said they can manage any risks presented by Huawei, but Germany is eyeing tougher controls on the company. 

Indeed, even within the Central European countries known as the Visegrád Four—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—views differ. 

Hungary and Slovakia have said they do not see Huawei as a threat, but Prague and Warsaw have been more cautious, with Poland arresting a company employee in January on allegations of spying. (Underlining the stakes, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to the region last month, to warn that China was targeting Central Europe in an effort to divide the West.)
Here in the Czech Republic, intelligence officials warned last year that the company and ZTE, another Chinese technology firm, posed risks to national security and was a tool of Chinese espionage. 

Zeman—whose position has limited scope beyond some foreign-policy duties and the appointment of certain officials—dismissed that assessment, arguing that the national cybersecurity agency, NUKIB, has resorted to “dirty tricks” to undermine Chinese business ties that he had worked to cultivate. 

But Babiš, a billionaire, ordered his office to discard any Huawei equipment being used and has tried to court American investment instead.
“We put a lot of pieces together, and if we see a threat, we are obligated by law to report it,” Radek Holy, a NUKIB spokesman, told me. 

“When the risk is so high, we have to report it.”
The decision to label Huawei and ZTE a national-security threat triggered a national audit of the technology used by government ministries. 

The Czech tax authority subsequently blocked Huawei from taking part in a now-canceled tender to build an online tax portal, while the defense ministry ordered its employees to wipe sensitive applications from any Huawei phones they were using.
Though significant attention has focused on Russian disinformation campaigns and alleged efforts by Moscow to influence elections in Europe and North America, some security experts argue that China’s efforts pose as much, if not more, of a threat.
Intelligence officials argue that, because of Huawei’s links to the government in Beijing, were the company to build the architecture on which countries’ entire telecom systems rest, China could retain enormous leverage over their communications and their economies.
“The Chinese have been very active here,” said General Andor Šándor, a former chief of the Czech military-intelligence service who is now a security consultant.
“They don’t want to undermine our relationship with NATO, or the EU, unlike the Russians. What they are really keen on is to squeeze as much technological information from us as possible.”
While there are real geopolitical consequences for what happens here in the Czech Republic, however, the dispute over Huawei is as much a domestic political standoff between two men who have sought to play the various sides off one another for their own advantage.
Since entering office in 2013, Zeman has often courted controversy.
He has stood on the side of Russia and China despite the Czech Republic’s repressive history under communism, and has showed disdain for democratic institutions: He once wielded a mock rifle with the words for journalists emblazoned across it during a press conference.
His strong ties to Chinese companies predate Huawei. 
CEFC China Energy, a firm with connections to the government in Beijing, made more than $1 billion in investments in the Czech Republic in a matter of years, and the company’s leader, Ye Jianming, was so close to Zeman that he was named a special adviser to the Czech leader. (Ye is now reportedly being held by the Chinese authorities for unspecified reasons.)
Babiš, too, has tried to press the diplomatic row to his favor.
Elected in 2016 on an anti-establishment, anti-migrant platform, the Czech Republic’s second-richest man has survived numerous conflict-of-interest scandals associated with his European agricultural empire.
In one of them, he was accused last year of kidnapping his own son to obstruct a high-profile fraud investigation over the misuse of $2.25 million in subsidy funds from the European Union.
He has repeatedly denied the charges.
He has ordered his office to stop using Huawei equipment, while eagerly pursuing American businesses.
In January, Babiš met with both Tim Cook, the Apple chief executive, and John Donovan, the AT&T head, on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, saying afterward that he’d invited AT&Tto develop 5G in the Czech Republic and that Cook had agreed to open an Apple store in Prague.
Yet he has also refused to explicitly pick sides in Trump’s trade war with China, and declined to bar Huawei completely.
“Babiš is pragmatic and knows that he needs the West more than the East, so to speak, if only because his business activities are spread throughout Europe, so he wants to be on good terms with western Europe,” said Jiří Pehe, a political analyst at New York University’s Prague campus.
Huawei representatives declined to comment for this story, but referred me to an interview that Huawei’s Czech and Slovak country director, Radoslaw Kedzia, gave to the Czech newspaper Právo.
In it, he said that Huawei wishes to resolve the matter in “a friendly and open way.”
Kedzia added, however, that “if all other ways fail, we have no other choice, and we have to defend ourselves.”
The company’s dispute with Prague appears likely to rise in prominence in the weeks to come, as the country’s politics split along pro- and anti-Huawei lines.
In an effort to alleviate China’s concerns ahead of Zeman’s visit next month, Vojtěch Filip, head of the Czech Communist Party, which is currently propping up Babiš’s coalition government, visited China in January to meet government officials and Huawei executives.
Filip told me he’d used the time to reassure the Chinese that their interests would be protected in the Czech Republic, a message Zeman plans to echo.
In a televised address in January, the Czech president made that stance clear.
Arguing that NUKIB had “threatened our position and our economic interests in China,” Zeman said that “instead of achieving the digitization of our economy,” the Czech Republic would be left having to pay even more for 5G technology.
“That,” Zeman concluded emphatically, “is all.”

European Horses

China Seeks Influence in Europe, One Business Deal at a Time

By David Barboza, Marc Santora and Alexandra Stevenson

The Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, center right, welcoming Milos Zeman, center left, at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2015. Ye Jianming, far left, headed CEFC China Energy, which spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic.

PRAGUE — When Xi Jinping became the first top Chinese leader to visit the Czech Republic, he was accompanied by a mysterious Chinese tycoon with big political ambitions, money to burn and strong ties to the Czech president.
Ye Jianming was the sole businessman among the group of Chinese and Czech government officials who gathered two years ago outside the presidential summer residence where Xi and Milos Zeman, his Czech counterpart, planted ginkgo trees. 

For Ye, it was recognition of his role as a major power broker in Prague, having bought landmark properties, a local brewery and a much beloved soccer team.
The meeting — and the Ye's presence — cemented China’s newfound influence on politics and business in Zeman’s Czech Republic and signaled its broader ambitions in Europe.
In just two years Ye’s company, CEFC China Energy, had spent more than $1 billion on deals in the Czech Republic. 

He hired former Czech officials, including a onetime defense minister. 

Ye was even named a special economic adviser to Zeman.
Zeman, in turn, became a big backer of Beijing, tamping down domestic opposition to Chinese influence and taking up Chinese causes. 

He publicly supported China’s claims over Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its territory. 

When Xi visited, police tried to keep protesters out of sight; some later accused the police of using violence to suppress them. 

The family of a prominent Holocaust survivor said Zeman withdrew a proposed medal for the man after his nephew met with the Dalai Lama, an exiled spiritual leader whom China considers a rebel.

China's fifth column: Xi's myrmidons demonstrated during his visit in Prague in 2016.

For China, the Czech courtship was an unqualified victory: It had won a sure friend in Europe, an American military ally and a country once seen as a bulwark for liberal democracy in a strategically important region. 

As Zeman declared, the Czech Republic hoped to become “an unsinkable aircraft carrier of Chinese investment expansion” in Europe.
Then, Ye was detained in China this year, exposing the Czech Republic to the perils of this new relationship and forcing the president to defend his quick embrace of the Chinese deal maker. 

While the reason for Ye’s detention was never made public, critics of the Czech president saw Ye’s disappearance as proof that the country shouldn’t have tied its future and its fortune to the Chinese.
An emboldened, globally ambitious China is using money, business deals and other incentives to extend its power abroad. 

The pitch can hold great appeal in a world shaken by Washington’s growing disengagement and Europe’s struggles.
But tighter ties to China mean greater susceptibility to an opaque political system where decisions are made behind the scenes. 

Investments can be driven by politics rather than economics, resulting in costly white elephants.
In the Czech Republic, Ye’s sudden disappearance took the country’s leaders by surprise. 

They couldn’t discern why that would happen to someone who seemed to have the government’s blessing. 

They had not pressed him on where he was getting his money to make big flashy deals in the Czech Republic and elsewhere. 

Officials also had difficulty answering questions about criminal allegations in the United States that a senior business associate of CEFC had tried to bribe his way into new business opportunities in Africa.
Zeman dispatched a team of officials to determine what the tycoon’s problems meant for the Czech Republic. 

He soon found out.
Prague was about to become even more enmeshed with the Chinese government. 

A state-owned company stepped in to take control of Ye’s empire, fueling suspicions that the company was politically important to the Chinese leadership.

Xi and Zeman during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing in 2014. Zeman’s visit was the first by a Czech leader in nearly a decade.

Eastern Appeal
Early in his political career, Zeman, a blunt-spoken populist, warned against toadying up to Russia and China. 

Those seeking deeper ties with Beijing, he told a local newspaper in 1996, are “ready to go under plastic surgery to slant their eyes.”
But the realities in Europe were changing by the time he won the Czech presidency in 2013.
The global financial crisis had tested Europe’s unity. 

Refugees from Syria had begun to arrive, fueling nativist sentiment and pitting local politicians against the bloc’s leaders. 

Western Europe no longer seemed to be the only option.
At the time, Beijing was beginning to pour money and political capital into Eastern and Central Europe as part of a broad bid to increase its heft in Europe. 

China’s leaders see the region as potentially fertile ground. 

While Britain, France and Germany welcomed greater investments from Beijing, they still bucked China’s stances on issues like human rights and its claim to control almost all of the South China Sea. Eastern and Central Europe didn’t have the same qualms.
Looking for further inroads, China started what came to be called the 16+1 initiative, an effort to expand cooperation with more than a dozen Eastern and Central European nations. 

It became a forum for China to show off what it could offer the region, like access to technology for a high-speed rail system. 

Xi later included Eastern and Central Europe in his Belt and Road Initiative, an ambitious plan to develop economic and diplomatic ties through infrastructure projects around the world.
China’s influence in Europe is already apparent. 

Greece last year blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record. 

Greece and Hungary worked to water down a 2016 European Union statement regarding the South China Sea.
For Zeman, the courtship basically had to start from scratch.
The former Czechoslovakia recognized the Communist-led China in 1949, but a rift between Moscow and Beijing kept them apart. 

The post-Soviet Czech Republic, remembering the brutal 1968 Soviet crackdown on reform efforts in Prague and subsequent Communist domination, found common cause with Beijing’s critics.
Vaclav Havel, the anti-Communist activist and the country’s first leader after the fall of the Berlin Wall, invited the Dalai Lama to a state visit in 1990, angering Beijing. 

He had stern words for China. 

“Intimidation, propaganda campaigns, and repression,” he wrote, “are no substitute for reasoned dialogue.”

The Piraeus Container Terminal, operated by the Chinese state-owned shipping company Cosco in Athens. Greece, which has received significant Chinese investment, blocked a European Union statement in the United Nations criticizing China’s human rights record.

Zeman, a well-known smoker and drinker who once publicly denied that he showed up at his inauguration drunk, broke with that history. 

He rejected Havel-era support for the Dalai Lama and its close ties to the government of Taiwan.
He visited China in 2014, the first visit by a Czech leader in nearly a decade. 

A year later, he was the only European Union leader to attend a military parade celebrating the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. 

That helped him secure Xi’s 2016 visit to Prague.
“This is a restart,” Zeman told Chinese official media before Xi’s visit, adding that the previous government had been “very submissive” to the United States and the European Union.
“Now, we are again an independent country,” he said, “and we formulate our foreign policy, which is based on our own national interests, and we do not interfere with the internal affairs of any other country.”
His focus on China won wide praise from the Czech political apparatus.
“If anybody thinks that under current circumstances it is possible to create safe and prosperous world without cooperation with China, then he has missed the train long ago,” said Katerina Konecna, vice chairman of the Czech Republic’s Communist Party.
Zeman’s office said its efforts to court China were no different from the efforts of others.
“Those that have expressed such criticism offend our Western allies who collaborate extraordinarily tightly with the People’s Republic of China,” said Jiri Ovcacek, a spokesman for Zeman. 

Zeman’s office didn’t respond to further requests for comment.

CEFC’s European headquarters in Prague. The company bought a stake in one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. It also bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.

A Shadowy Suitor
Zeman’s 2014 visit proved fateful for the Czech Republic. 

Among the business deals reached was a cooperation pact between a Czech financial firm and an up-and-coming energy company called CEFC.
It was led by Ye Jianming, who was born in a small village in the southern Chinese province of Fujian. 

He grabbed hold of assets once controlled by a notorious smuggler and in a few years parlayed them into a sprawling business empire with 30,000 employees. 

Ye traveled the world on his twin-engine Airbus 319 private jet, meeting heads of state, Russian oligarchs and the crown prince of Abu Dhabi.
CEFC was modeled on Xi’s vision of a stronger China — and it went where Xi wanted China to go. It struck deals in the United Arab Emirates and Kazakhstan. 

It courted top leaders in places like Albania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Sudan and Uganda. 

Last year, it agreed to buy a $9 billion stake in Rosneft, the Russian oil giant, which put it firmly in the middle of the complicated but important relationship between Beijing and Moscow.
Its fast rise fueled rumors in China that Ye had ties to Xi, who once worked in Fujian, or other Chinese leaders. 

CEFC did little to discourage them. 

Ye was part of a group tied to the Chinese military, according to documents and experts. 

On its website, CEFC cited the military and Communist Party experience of its top executives.
The Czech Republic made a tempting target for CEFC’s international push. 

The country was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was disillusioned with the West and ready to do business.
CEFC bought a stake in Florentinum, one of Prague’s biggest office complexes. 

It invested in the Czech national airline, two hotels and a pair of Renaissance-era buildings. 

It bought a brewery that traces its roots back more than 700 years.
Zeman’s staff trumpeted the deals as proof that courting China made economic sense.
“People believed the rhetoric,” said Olga Lomova, the head of the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation International Sinological Center of Charles University in Prague. 

“We have the Chinese. We will be happy again.”
CEFC also hired figures close to Zeman, leading to accusations from critics of a revolving door between the Chinese company and the president. 

Jaroslav Tvrdik, the country’s former minister of defense, was hired to run CEFC’s Czech operations while serving as an adviser on China to the government. 

Czech officials defended keeping Tvrdik as an adviser, saying the position was unpaid.
Miroslav Sklenar, Zeman’s protocol chief, left that position in 2015 for a role at CEFC. 

He returned to the presidential palace at the end of 2016.
Early on, CEFC worried that its growing involvement would upset the public. 

Its solution: Buy the local soccer team.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team’s uniforms were changed to say “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.

Slavia Prague had been on the brink of bankruptcy when CEFC purchased a majority stake in 2015. The team began to spend heavily under its new owner, retaining its star forward, Milan Škoda, and signing a Dutch player, Gino van Kessel. 

Last year, the club won its first league championship since 2009. 

Slavia Prague played in uniforms that said “CEFC China” in Roman letters and in Chinese characters.
CEFC’s deals made little business sense to observers. 

“So many of the acquisitions were made in a rush, and were nonsense,” said Ms. Lomova, of Charles University. 

“They were not investments that were able to pay for themselves.”
And CEFC acknowledged that its motivations went beyond business. 

“Our company cares about what we can do to bridge the cultural gap,” Jiang Chunyu, a senior executive at CEFC said at a forum in China in December.
Protestors carrying Tibetan flags shouted slogans against Xi during his visit in Prague in 2016.

Promises Undone
Xi’s historic 2016 visit to Prague showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries. 

It also showed that cracks were forming.
Thousands of protesters tried to greet the Chinese leader as he met with Zeman in Prague Castle. Members of both the Czech and European parliaments joined. 

One lawmaker, who owns a home on the hill beneath the castle, set up a projector to cast the words “Truth and Love” on the castle wall — an invocation of a famous quote of Havel’s, who said that truth and love would vanquish lies and hatred. 

Flags lining Xi’s route from the airport were defaced.
Czech authorities, with the help of CEFC, tried to obscure the tensions. 

Police officers blocked demonstrators from getting too close to the castle, setting off complaints from protesters about police violence.
“Why are the police protecting the Chinese and limiting the ability of the Czech people to express themselves?” said Ondrej Kolar, the mayor of a Prague district.
Wherever Xi traveled, busloads of local Chinese supporters appeared, too.
Filip Lexa, a 33-year-old teacher and doctoral student studying Chinese literature, said he showed up with a flag representing the Uighur minority of western China, where the authorities there have cracked down on the local population. 

He said he was harassed by a group of Chinese men bused into the event.
“When I took the flag out, everyone attacked me,” he said, adding that he escaped serious injury. “They pulled me into the middle of this group and started kicking me and hitting me with the flag poles they were carrying. One even broke a pole on my back.”
CEFC played a major role in trying to make sure the Chinese dictator’s visit went smoothly, said Mr. Kolar, the mayor who was involved in preparations for the event because his district is home to a number of embassies.
“It wasn’t organized by the state, but by a private company,” he said. 

“CEFC organized the whole event.”
CEFC arranged for the display of Chinese flags along the route through Mr. Kolar’s neighborhood — flags with red and yellow color reminiscent of the Soviet Union. 

When some were defaced, CEFC workers replaced them.
“It felt like the ’70s or ’80s again,” Mr. Kolar said. 

“Then it was revealed that it was CEFC who paid for those flags.”
Many Czechs had other reasons to sour on the relationship with China. 

Investment figures have proved disappointing — Taiwan’s investment in 2017 was nearly three times that of China’s, according to data from Sinopsis, a research group focused on China. 

Zeman attributed the shortfall to new Chinese limits on money flowing abroad.
The revocation of an award to a famous Czech Holocaust survivor also set off outrage. 

George Brady, an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor, was set to be honored at a Czech state dinner in 2016 and receive a medal for his work. 

His sister, Hana Brady, died in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, and he had turned her story into a popular children’s book called “Hana’s Suitcase.”
But his nephew was the Czech Republic’s culture minister — and he was set to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

Before the ceremony, the nephew, Daniel Herman, received a call from Zeman’s office.
“I was told that if I went ahead with a meeting with the Dalai Lama, there would be no medal,” Mr. Herman said in an interview. 

He went ahead with the meeting. 

“And there was no ceremony,” he said.
Czech officials acknowledged that Zeman asked Mr. Herman not to meet with the Dalai Lama. 

They said the withdrawal of the medal was unrelated, although they did not specify a reason.

Zeman, right, and Xi on the terrace of the Strahov Monastery overlooking Prague. Xi’s historic 2016 visit showed the China-Czech relationship to be the closest in the history of the two countries.

But China’s biggest challenge to its Czech strategy began elsewhere.
In November, American authorities arrested Patrick Ho, a top executive of CEFC’s nonprofit arm, and charged him with offering bribes to officials in Uganda and Chad in exchange for oil rights.
Czech officials and one person with direct knowledge of Ye’s case say he was detained by the Chinese authorities after Ho’s arrest. 

A short time later, the company was hit with a number of problems. 

Its bid for a stake in Rosneft collapsed. 

And Chinese rating firms warned that CEFC had taken on considerable debt.
In April, Zeman met with officials from Citic Group, a state-controlled Chinese company that had agreed to buy just under half of CEFC’s Europe venture. 

While Ye’s ties to China’s leadership had been just rumored, Citic is a company firmly under Beijing’s control. 

Citic didn’t respond to requests for comment.
If a direct role for Beijing in Czech businesses bothered Zeman, he has shown little public sign. 

He is set to make another visit to the Chinese capital this autumn.

A security guard at the entrance of an unmarked building in Shanghai listed as an address for CEFC.

Rule by Fear and Torture

Canada, 10 other countries call out China for torturing human rights lawyers
By NATHAN VANDERKLIPPE

BEIJING — Eleven countries have jointly called on the Chinese government to investigate reports of torture against human rights lawyers and urged Beijing to abandon a controversial detention system that holds suspects in secret locations for months at a time.
The unusually direct criticism comes in a letter from the Chinese diplomatic missions of the signatory countries, including Canada, that expresses “growing concern over recent claims of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in cases concerning detained human rights lawyers and other human rights defenders.”
The signatories call for China to end the practice of “residential surveillance at a designated place,” a Chinese form of pretrial custody for sensitive cases that allows suspects to be held for up to six months, often without families or lawyers being told where they are.
Residential surveillance amounts to “incommunicado detention in secret places, putting detainees at a high risk of torture and ill-treatment,” the letter states. 

China should, it says, remove all suspects from residential surveillance and repeal enabling legislation.
“Detaining people without any contact with the outside world for long periods of time is contrary to China’s international human rights obligations,” the letter says.
It calls for a prompt and independent investigation into “claims of torture” against lawyers Xie Yang, Li Heping, Wang Quanzhang and Li Chunfu, as well as activist Wu Gan.
Under Xi Jinping, Chinese authorities have waged a war on civil society, detaining and arresting labour activists, women’s rights campaigners and human rights defenders. 

Hundreds of human rights activists and lawyers have been questioned and detained, Amnesty International has said.
Mr. Xie was punched, kicked and kneed by interrogators who threatened: “I’m going to torment you until you go insane.” 

Authorities used electric shocks to torture Li Heping and Mr. Wang.

Family members of Li Chunfu said 500 days of secret detention left him with a mind that was “shattered.” 

Wu Gan was not allowed to sleep for several days and nights.
The Globe and Mail obtained a copy of the Feb. 27 letter, which has not been made public. 

It was addressed to Guo Shengkun, China’s Minister of Public Security. 

It was signed by ambassadors and chargés d’affaires from Australia, Canada, Japan and Switzerland, along with seven European Union member countries: Belgium, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Neither China’s public security ministry nor its foreign ministry responded to requests for comment on Monday.
“Canada raises human rights with our Chinese counterparts regularly, using a variety of methods,” an embassy spokesperson said in a statement. 

“Sometimes it is public, but often these issues are best raised privately, where we can have a frank discussion.” 

The Japanese embassy declined comment, since the letter was sent through a diplomatic channel. 

The German embassy said it is “not in a position to comment.”
Joint action is often the most effective way to pressure China, human rights advocates say.
“Beijing always hears a clearer and firmer message when it’s delivered by multiple governments,” said Sophie Richardson, China director for Human Rights Watch. 

The issuance of joint letters is “a strong indication of the widespread concern about human rights erosions in China today.”
Shortly after the letter was sent, Chinese government-controlled media published a week-long series of articles and social media posts lashing out at what People’s Daily called “FAKE NEWS” in Western media reports on the torture of Mr. Xie, the human rights lawyer. 

State-run news agency Xinhua called Mr. Xie’s accusations of mistreatment “nothing but cleverly orchestrated lies” orchestrated by a legal team “aiming to cater to the tastes of Western institutions and media organizations and to use public opinion to pressure police and smear the Chinese government.”
Mr. Xie’s lawyer, Chen Jian'gang, has issued a detailed rebuttal of what he called “groundless lies” in those state media reports.
In an interview Monday, Mr. Chen questioned why the 11-country letter was submitted quietly.
Had it been made public, “the effect would have been much stronger,” he said. 

In a closed and restrictive system like China’s, he said, “secret talk and private questions will have no effect whatsoever.”
Joint diplomatic letters are rare, but becoming more common as countries seek a way to raise issues with China, while avoiding individual retribution from a government that often exacts revenge through economic means.
Last year, the U.S., Canada, Germany and Japan together expressed concern about three new Chinese laws on counterterrorism, cybersecurity and the management of foreign non-governmental organizations. 

Those laws, they wrote, had “the potential to impede commerce, stifle innovation, and infringe on China’s obligation to protect human rights.” 

The European Union submitted a similar letter.
Adding several signatures to one document was a way to raise attention in Beijing, said Guy Saint-Jacques, who was then Canada’s ambassador to China.
“We came to the conclusion that the Chinese were not listening to what we had to say,” he said.
The letter “was badly received by the Chinese government. It accused us of ganging up on them,” he said. 

It produced limited results. 

“There was an offer in one case to have more consultation, and there were some slight changes” to proposed legislation, said Mr. Saint-Jacques, who retired from the foreign service last fall. 

But “they didn’t go as far as we would have liked them to go.”
The new letter on torture, he said, comes at a time when “all observers agree that the human rights situation has deteriorated a lot under Xi Jinping,” even as China has grown more confident in promoting the merits of its autocratic system to other countries.
The letter is notable, however, in part for who did not sign. 

Only seven members of the European Union participated; several diplomatic sources said unanimous support was blocked by Hungary, whose Prime Minister Viktor Orban has praised China’s authoritarian model and sought Chinese investment. (The EU in January publicly called for an investigation into the handling of Chinese human rights lawyers, saying their treatment, if verified “would amount to torture.”)
The United States was also absent from the letter, which human rights workers took as a worrying sign of Washington’s posture under Donald Trump.
“When a country like the U.S. is silent on this, it’s really interpreted by Beijing as a free hand to do what they want. And that costs people their lives,” said Sarah Cook, senior East Asia research analyst at Freedom House, a Washington-based watchdog on political, religious and economic liberties. 

“So it’s unfortunate if the U.S. removes itself from that type of leadership role.”
U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has pledged to keep pressing China on such issues.
“I made clear that the United States will continue to advocate for universal values such as human rights and religious freedom,” he said in Beijing on Saturday.
The latest U.S. report on Chinese human rights documents former prisoners and detainees who “were beaten, subjected to electric shock, forced to sit on stools for hours on end, hung by the wrists, raped, deprived of sleep, force-fed, and otherwise subjected to physical and psychological abuse.”
The United Nations Committee against Torture, too, has criticized China for allowing torture to become “deeply entrenched” in its criminal justice system. 

In a late 2015 report, it urged Beijing to eliminate residential surveillance and hold criminally responsible any officials responsible for abuse.
Mr. Chen, the lawyer for Xie Yang, called residential surveillance a form of “illegal prison” that allows interrogators power to “do whatever they want.”
But he held out little hope that real change is possible in authoritarian China, even if the residential surveillance is formally abolished. 

He pointed to previous Chinese practices of “re-education through labour” and “custody and repatriation” that were scrapped, only to have other abuse-prone forms of detention emerge.
“As long as there is poison in the system, you can remove one poisonous fruit today — and that looks good,” Mr. Chen said. 

“But these kinds of poisonous fruit will grow out anew every day, without stop.”

Kowtowing to China’s despots is morally wrong

Czech president scrapped Holocaust survivor medal due to Dalai Lama
By Robert Muller

Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama gestures during a teaching event in Milan, Italy October 21, 2016. 

Czech Republic's President Milos Zeman

PRAGUE -- Czech President Milos Zeman decided against awarding a state medal to a Holocaust survivor after the man's nephew, a Czech government minister, met exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama against the president's wishes, the minister said on Friday.
The Czech Republic has been engulfed in political furor over the Dalai Lama's meetings this week with Culture Minister Daniel Herman against the wishes of the Chinese government -- which sees the Dalai Lama as a separatist -- and Zeman, who has strongly pushed for a closer economic relationship with China.
The drive to focus on Chinese investments has met opposition from many corners of the EU member country whose post-communist policy set by the late leader Vaclav Havel strongly promoted human rights. 

Havel was a friend of the Tibetan monk and Nobel Peace Prize laureate.
Herman confirmed in a text message to Reuters that the president's office had requested he cancel his meeting with the Tibetan monk or his uncle would not be granted an award.
Herman's uncle George Brady, 88, was supposed to receive the honor for his lifelong campaign for Holocaust remembrance at an annual celebration at Prague Castle, the seat of the president, next Friday on Czech state day.
Brady survived Nazi persecution, including the death camp at Auschwitz, where his sister and parents perished.
"My uncle informed me he had been contacted by the president's office with information that his award was being prepared. Now there is news that this has been postponed for this year," Herman told Reuters.
Asked if he was given an ultimatum not to meet the Dalai Lama in connection with the award, he said: "Yes."
A spokesman for Zeman declined to comment directly on Herman's statement. 

He said the president had completed the list of nominees "some time ago" and had not subsequently dropped anyone.
The office never releases the names of the recipients of the state medals before the traditional ceremony.
George Brady moved to Canada after the war. 

In 2000, a suitcase with his sister Hana's name surfaced in a Tokio Holocaust Museum, whose director discovered her relation to George. 

Hana's suitcase later inspired a book, theater play and a film.