The Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday said the name of the Taiwanese Representative Office in Lithuania was agreed by both sides, after Lithuania’s prime minister described a 2021 decision to let Taiwan set up a de facto embassy in Vilnius as a “mistake.”
Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginiene, who entered office in September last year, told the Baltic News Service on Tuesday that Lithuania had begun taking “small first steps” aimed at restoring ties with Beijing.
The ministry in a statement said that Taiwan and Lithuania are important partners that share the values of freedom and democracy.
Since the establishment of the office, Taiwan and Lithuania have continued working together to promote substantive cooperation in fields such as lasers, semiconductors and finance, strengthening democratic economic resilience, it said.
Taiwan would continue to maintain close communication with Lithuania to jointly deepen bilateral relations, it added.
China yesterday said that it was open to dialogue with Vilnius.
“We hope Lithuania will translate its willingness to improve bilateral relations into concrete actions, promptly rectify its error, return to the correct path of adhering to the ‘one China’ principle and lay the groundwork for normalizing China-Lithuania relations,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian (林劍) said.
“The door for communication between China and Lithuania remains open,” Lin told a regular news conference.
In late 2021, China downgraded relations with Lithuania after Taiwan opened the office.
In contrast to Lithuania, countries such as the UK, the US and Australia host offices that are usually known as “Taipei” representative offices, which avoids the implication of statehood and sovereignty.
Since the breakdown in relations with Beijing, Lithuania has recalled its ambassador in China and other diplomats.
In late 2024, Lithuania expelled three Chinese diplomats stationed in China’s Office of the Charge d’Affaires, declaring them personae non gratae.
Last year, China banned Lithuanian banks UAB Urbo Bankas and AB Mano Bankas from carrying out transactions, and cooperation with organizations and individuals within China.
“I think Lithuania really jumped in front of a train and lost,” Ruginiene said.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS