China's clear message

Several fictionalized accounts of the Latin American drug scene work in the story of Héctor Luis Palma Salazar, whose wife ran off with a rival trafficker and never came back alive. The rival returned the wife's head in a box and threw her two children off a bridge. In "Narcos: Mexico" on Netflix, cartel boss Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo orders these gruesome acts as a way to warn his people of what treachery means. There's a tinge of this in the letter China sent to the Castle last month. If the Senate president runs off to Taiwan, Beijing might very well send someone's head back in a box (figuratively speaking) and throw Škoda Auto, Home Credit and Petrof pianos off a bridge. That is the price of betraying the Czech-Chinese strategic partnership and the one-China policy. Chances are that even if Senate Pres. Jaroslav Kubera had not died, the letter would have eventually come out. China had a message to send, and the Czech media were the willing messenger.