Editor's note: Abu Naser Al Farabi is a Dhaka-based columnist and analyst focusing on international politics, especially Asian Affairs. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Lithuania, a tiny Baltic republic with a population of less than three million, has left many across the world surprised by its fervent anti-China policy policies, causing bilateral relations between Beijing and Vilnius to deteriorate.

From inserting China into its annual National Threat Assessment in 2019 to withdrawing itself from the China-led 17+1 cooperation framework between China and Central and Eastern European countries in May 2021, Lithuania's anti-China policies, up to that point, were still within Beijing's tolerable limits.

Nonetheless, Lithuania had dared go further, even making a blow to China's sovereignty and territorial integrity. In November 2021, it allowed the Taiwan region to open a "representative office" in Lithuania. Such drastic policy shifts on the part of Lithuania toward China had left many, even in Brussels and other European capitals, wondering why the small country has embroiled itself in a feud with the world's second-largest economy when it has much more immediate problems at home.

Officially, Vilnius continues to promote its anti-China policies as so-called democratic values. As noted by the Lithuanian journalist, Denis Kishinevsky, in his article on Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, "It [Lithuania] appears to be far more concerned by the situation in Belarus, Russia, and now China than in Turkey, Iran, Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia, and other places."

In addition to the very hollowness of its stated claims, one could discern its real intent in playing the "China card," as well as a poisonous proxy game getting played out behind the curtains.

Poisonous pragmatism

A country born out of the Cold War and with historical peculiarities, Lithuania's "international activities was until recently associated almost exclusively with its standing up to Russia," said Kishinevsky.

Given the typical characteristics of the smaller Central and Eastern European countries, born out of the Western intention to "create a network of their client states on the basis of the European colonial empires," Lithuania has long craved security assistance from Washington, out of an inflated threat perception about Moscow, partly fomented by the U.S. And it has paid off for Lithuania well through its accession into NATO and the rotational presence of U.S. troops on its soil, now further seeking the permanent presence of U.S. troops.

But, the Lithuanian government, sensing the pulse of the current Western political mania and the pervasive presence of anti-China sentiments in the U.S. policy establishment, seek to grow beyond its long-standing narrow niche of Russia's eternal critics.

Given the U.S. strategic shift to the Asia-Pacific to "contain" China and subsequent fear of declining U.S. focus on Europe, Vilnius's political establishment has concluded that criticism of China and standing against its core interests have become the optimum weapon to carve out a way to befriend Washington.

Though, given the geographical distance and bilateral trade volume between China and Lithuania, China does not pose a threat to Lithuania, as in the case of its typical threat perception to Russia. But Vilnius has assumed its anti-China stance can be attuned to the Western anti-China hysteria, which could serve its national interests.

Proxy diplomacy for profit

Struggling to craft out any functional containment policy, Washington is brandishing the "Taiwan card" onerously against China. Vilnius has grasped this card, toeing Washington's provocative line on China's Taiwan region. Hosting the de facto "representative office" for Taiwan in Vilnius has taken years in making and is an outcome of a tacit understanding between Washington and Vilnius.

For Lithuania, peddling proxy diplomacy on the behest of Washington has not gone unrewarded. The U.S. will sign an agreement with Lithuania to provide $600 million in export credit support. Moreover, as a charm offensive against the Chinese mainland, Taiwan has announced a $1 billion program to finance joint projects in Lithuania. The strategic line of Lithuania is provoking China, invoking retaliation from it, and then the Baltic country will peddle self-created distress in order to derive sympathy from the U.S. and EU.

All that Vilnius has been doing out of its disastrous and profit-seeking impulses are against the international norms and against the very public opinions at home, given that many Lithuanians are against the current government's unprofessional, irrational and catastrophic anti-China policy policies.

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