70 years of Czech-Chinese friendship

Among all the demonstrations in Nov. and Dec. of 1989, there is one that has almost been forgotten. On Dec. 3, several thousand students marched in Prague to protest against the violent suppression of China's pro-democracy movement on Tiananmen Square in June of that year. "When troops attacked and killed demonstrators in Beijing, students here [in Prague] said they were horrified but powerless to respond," wrote the New York Times on Dec. 4, 1989. "Their own repressive government supported the Chinese authorities, thwarting any chance of a student show of solidarity." Unlike the U.S. and most of Western Europe, which didn't begin recognizing Beijing diplomatically until the 1970s, Czechoslovakia signed up within days of the founding of the People's Republic of China in Oct. 1949. Czechs, in fact, never really made a democratic decision at all about dumping democratic Taiwan and adopting a one-China policy that favors the Communists on the mainland. In a sense, this is what the current "uprising" against China by Prague Mayor Zdeněk Hřib and Senate Pres. Jaroslav Kubera is about.