Analysis

Beijing terminates sister city agreement with Prague

prague tram

Beijing has terminated its sister city agreement with Prague and will suspend all official contacts with the Czech capital.

According to the Chinese embassy in the Czech Republic, the leaders of the new Prague coalition have repeatedly taken inappropriate steps and commented on questions about China’s key interests in Taiwan and Tibet, which was considered to be a gross interference in China’s internal affairs and a deliberate violation of its sister partnership with Beijing.

Ties had already been undermined after the Czech National Cyber and Information Security Agency (NCISA) warned of security threats posed by Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei and accused its managers of collecting personal information from clients and inserting those details into a database managed by Chinese officials.