Behind the Chinese 'lie'

A month before Chinese Amb. Zhang Jianmin "lied" on Facebook about his pre-Christmas meeting with Andrej Babiš, he introduced himself to Czechs by calling on them in MFD to join forces with China to stand up to the U.S. at the World Trade Organization and to combat unilateralism and protectionism. The goal, he said, is a single, connected global community. The CR has long promoted free trade and rejected protectionism, he said. People around Miloš Zeman might say that the ongoing Huawei incident is payback for his comment about the "amateurs" at the BIS counterintelligence agency, as Petr Kolář reported in MFD today, but they are fooling themselves if they truly think this. It's no doubt part of Donald Trump's trade war, and Czechs must decide whose side they are on. China, as Trump sees it, is the enemy, and the barbarians are already inside the gate. They will now start turning the West's own weapons against it, whether at the WTO or in Czech courts.