@bobs_monkey@lemm.ee

Yes, this is why autocracies have already and are most likely to receive Chinese investments, e.g., within the country’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) of which Novi Sad’s canopy was part of.

China’s rise has created an attractive alternative for autocratic regimes, especially since it does not impose the same kinds of conditions that often require loosening state controls on the corporate sector and reducing clientelism. Between 2014 and 2019, I find that 77% of total BRI spending on construction projects went to autocracies, and primarily to those with semi-competitive elections.

@Saleh@feddit.org

This is not very surprising as Saulius Skvernelis has been shown a pro-China bias for a long time. When China improved its ties with Taiwan and opened a Taiwanese Representative Office in Vilnius around the beginning of the pandemic, for example, Lithuania became the target of Chinese state-controlled propaganda media:

In its usual style, the Global Times published a series of articles to highlight Lithuania’s “dark history” focusing not only on accusations of inhumane treatment of refugees along the Lithuanian-Belarussian border, but also on the evaluation of Lithuania’s past wrongdoings’ such as with regards to the so-called CIA’s “black jails” and Lithuania’s role in the torture of prisoners. The Global Times also went as far as to condemn Lithuania’s “shocking past and present” including the country’s role in the Holocaust, nationwide discrimination and mistreatment of ethnic minorities.

While this might be hand-waved as the usual ramblings of the Chinese jingoistic media, Beijing’s official statements mirrored this approach. During his media conference, Chinese MFA spokesperson Zhao accused Lithuania of setting “double standards” and refusing to address the country’s appalling human rights situation. The accusations included some shocking statements such as “Since World War II, the racism in Lithuania towards Jews and other ethnic minorities remains a huge problem, ethnic minorities suffer from discrimination, their rights to access to medical care and freedom of movement are seriously violated.”

Shortly after, the Lithuanian Jewish Community (LJC) released a statement in which it “strongly rejects these accusations made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. ” LJC stressed that “Lithuania is a democratic country that respects Lithuanian Jews’ and other citizens’ rights”, and that it “wishes that ethnic minorities in China could enjoy the same rights as Lithuanian Jews in Lithuania.”

The headline should rather be, “Russia forces Finland, other neighbouring countries to withdraw from landmines treaty.” It’s very sad that they have do that.

The next propaganda news. The senior politician Michael Kretschmer - ‘not wanted’ in Ukraine- also questioned Germany’s support and didn’t want to deliver weapons to Kyiv in 2022 when the war started.

I don’t know, maybe. I am just wondering what this “other agenda” actually is. Undermining Ukraine’s EU accession? It’s independence? I don’t know, but it’s good that Zelenskyy has rejected the deal.

According to renowned scientists, Ukraine doesn’t actually have minable Rare Earths.

The contentious 28 February Oval Office meeting can’t be understood without a crucial piece of context: there are no deposits of rare-earth ore in Ukraine known to be minable in an economically viable way. And that would be true even if full-scale warfare were not raging in the country’s east, where a great deal of its mineral resources are concentrated.

Ukraine is believed to have four areas with substantial deposits of rare earth ores, according to Erik Jonsson, senior geologist with the Geological Survey of Sweden. “There are four slightly bigger deposits: Yastrubetske, Novopoltavske, Azovske, and Mazurivske. All but one of them seem to be now within or near the zone that the Russians control, as far as I can tell,” says Jonsson. “And when it comes to resources in those deposits, I mean, we have numbers; yes, that’s nice. But we have no real, detailed, outline of how those numbers were arrived at.” The numbers are believed to come from Soviet surveys dating as far back as the 1960s.

“The rare-earth deposits don’t look that relevant,” Jonsson concludes. “I mean, I wouldn’t go for them.” Two of the deposits are dominated by a mineral called britholite, he notes, which is not desirable because it has not been processed for rare earths, which means that almost nothing exists in the way of process chemistry and equipment.

“If you want critical minerals, Ukraine ain’t the place to look for them,” declares Jack Lifton, executive chairman of the Critical Minerals Institute. “It’s a fantasy. There’s no point to any of this. There’s some other agenda going on here. I can’t believe that anybody in Washington actually believes that it makes sense to get rare earths in Ukraine.”

[Emphasis mine.]