China–Czech Republic relations

Based on Wikipedia: China–Czech Republic relations

The Diplomat's Son Remembers Prague

In the 1930s, a young Chinese boy walked through Stromovka Park in Prague with his father, listening to lessons about how shifts in power across Eurasia might reshape the world. The father was Liang Lone, China's minister to Czechoslovakia. The boy would grow up to become the historian Liang Hsi-Huey, and decades later he would write about those walks, those conversations, and a remarkable period when two nations on opposite ends of the earth found unexpected common ground.

This is a story about diplomacy, arms deals, and the curious ways that small nations and vast empires sometimes understand each other better than their neighbors do. It's also a story about how culture travels in unexpected directions—about Czech scholars falling in love with Chinese poetry, and Chinese dignitaries traveling to Prague to see a famous doctor.

When Czechoslovakia Was an Industrial Giant

Here's something that might surprise you: in the 1930s, Czechoslovakia had the seventh largest economy in the world.

This wasn't an accident of statistics. The regions of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia—the territories that now make up the modern Czech Republic—had been the industrial heartland of the old Austrian Empire. When you needed weapons for the Imperial Austrian Army, you went to the Škoda Works in Plzeň. When the empire collapsed after World War One and Czechoslovakia emerged as an independent nation in 1918, it inherited all those factories, all that expertise, all that manufacturing capacity.

The result was striking. Czechoslovakia was the only nation in Eastern Europe besides the Soviet Union that manufactured its own weapons rather than importing them. It ranked as the world's seventh largest arms manufacturer, which made it a significant player in the global weapons trade. For a country roughly the size of South Carolina, this was remarkable leverage.

China noticed.

A Relationship Born from Necessity

In 1919, the newly established Republic of China recognized Czechoslovakia. That same year, at the Paris Peace Conference that followed World War One, delegates from both nations voted together for the Racial Equality Proposal—a measure that would have declared all races equal under international law. The proposal failed, opposed by countries like the United States and Australia, but the shared vote hinted at a deeper affinity between these two unlikely partners.

The relationship started slowly. A Chinese diplomat named Lu Zhengxiang, attending the Paris conference, wrote to a Czechoslovak politician suggesting that a play about ancient China written by the French leader Georges Clemenceau might be worth translating into Czech. It was a small gesture, the kind of cultural bridge-building that diplomats do almost reflexively.

But the interest wasn't symmetrical. Czech scholars were fascinated by Chinese culture. Chinese scholars, by contrast, were far more interested in Germany. One Chinese academic, Yu Ta-wei, captured the sentiment perfectly when he explained why Chinese students flocked to German universities: "There were scientists of the caliber of Albert Einstein, Max Planck, and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff teaching at German universities—what other country could boast intellectual resources of that caliber?"

Only after Nazi brownshirts began assaulting Chinese students in 1933 did young Chinese scholars start considering universities elsewhere.

The Minister in Warsaw Who Was Supposed to Cover Prague

For years, China didn't even bother to station a dedicated diplomat in Prague. The Chinese minister in Warsaw was expected to handle Czechoslovakia as well, and he rarely left Poland to meet with Czechoslovak politicians. This arrangement spoke volumes about how China prioritized its European relationships.

Then came a scandal. In 1933, the Chinese minister in Warsaw, a man named Chang Hsin-hai, was caught accepting bribes. He had been signing fake invoices for arms shipments that were supposedly going from Czechoslovakia to China but were actually being diverted to Spanish Morocco. The corruption forced Beijing to make a change, and Liang Lone was appointed as China's first dedicated minister to Prague.

It was one of those moments when a scandal accidentally produces something good.

The Hierarchy of European Diplomacy

China maintained seventeen diplomatic missions in Europe during the 1930s, but they weren't all equal. The major powers got embassies—Paris, London, Moscow, Berlin, Rome. Secondary powers got legations, a lower tier of diplomatic representation. Prague fell into this second category, alongside Lisbon, Warsaw, and Vienna.

Yet there was something the legation countries shared that actually mattered to Chinese diplomats: none of them had extraterritorial rights in China.

Extraterritoriality was one of the most humiliating features of China's relationship with Western powers. Under the so-called "Unequal Treaties" that had been imposed on China since the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, citizens of major European powers who committed crimes in China couldn't be tried in Chinese courts. They were subject only to their own nations' laws, enforced by their own consular courts. It was a constant reminder that China was considered a second-class nation.

Countries like Czechoslovakia, Portugal, Poland, and Austria had no such privileges. Relations with these nations offered China something valuable: proof that you could have a perfectly good diplomatic relationship without extraterritorial rights. Every successful interaction was a quiet argument against the system.

A Close-Knit Circle

Chinese diplomats in Europe during this era formed a tight community. They had all studied international law and foreign languages at universities abroad. They met regularly to discuss the problems of both continents. Minister Liang frequently traveled from Prague to Berlin, Paris, London, and Geneva—where the League of Nations was headquartered—to confer with his colleagues.

Prague also became an unexpected hub for visiting Chinese dignitaries, though not because of diplomacy. The city was home to Wilhelm Nonnenbruch, a renowned physician, and prominent Chinese figures would travel there for medical consultations. Madame Chen Suk-ying, wife of Sun Fo (himself the son of the legendary revolutionary Sun Yat-sen), visited regularly. So did H. H. Kung, China's finance minister, and Wang Jingwei, one of the most charismatic politicians in China.

Wang was the leader of the Kuomintang's left wing—until 1938, when he became a collaborator with Japan, one of the most notorious acts of betrayal in Chinese history. But before that fall from grace, he visited the Liang household in Prague. The younger Liang remembered the visit vividly:

He was so powerful an orator that after a patriotic speech he gave in our house over dinner, even our Czech servants in the kitchen felt moved, though they had not understood one word.

Two Countries, Two Senses of Time

Liang Hsi-Huey, looking back on his father's diplomatic career, observed something profound about the differences between Czechoslovakia and China.

Czechoslovakia was small, economically advanced, and highly centralized—what one might call a "disciplined democracy." China was vast, populous, and economically backward, held together not by legal obligations to the state but by traditions of loyalty to family and clan.

These differences created fundamentally different approaches to the world.

Czechoslovak leaders were obsessed with survival. They knew their country could be destroyed in a matter of days in what Liang called a "cataclysmic war." Every diplomatic move was designed to build alliances that might deter an invasion—especially from Germany.

Chinese leaders thought differently. China had spent the past century surrendering piece after piece of its territorial sovereignty—to Britain, France, Japan, Russia—and it still existed. The goal of Chinese diplomacy wasn't to prevent an apocalyptic war; it was to secure foreign aid for modernization and to end China's treatment as a second-class power.

The Czechoslovaks thought in terms of years. The Chinese thought in terms of decades.

The Shadow of Nazi Germany

Adolf Hitler's virulent anti-Asian racism should have concerned Chinese diplomats. It didn't, particularly. Germany was China's largest source of weapons. A German military mission was training the Chinese army. Chinese diplomats made a calculated decision to ignore Nazi racism as much as possible because the relationship was too valuable to jeopardize.

For Czechoslovakia, the calculus was entirely different. The Nazi ideology of völkisch nationalism classified Slavs as Untermenschen—subhumans—and Germans as the Herrenvolk, the master race. This wasn't abstract theorizing to be ignored; it was an existential and immediate threat. Czechoslovak diplomats looked at Nazi Germany and saw potential annihilation.

Arms and Industry

The practical heart of the China-Czechoslovakia relationship was commerce, particularly in arms and industrial equipment.

In 1928, China purchased a hydroelectric power plant from Škoda. In 1933, it bought machinery for a sugar processing plant from the same company. These were significant deals, but the real prize was weapons.

China's leader, Chiang Kai-shek, didn't want to become too dependent on any single source of arms—especially Germany, which was by far the largest supplier. So from 1932 onward, Chinese officers regularly visited Czechoslovakia on arms-buying missions. H. H. Kung personally inspected armament factories in Plzeň and Brno. Minister Liang encouraged these visits, seeing diversification of arms sources as strategically essential.

Beneš and the Limits of Collective Security

Edvard Beneš, Czechoslovakia's long-serving foreign minister and later its president, was considered one of the ablest diplomats in Europe. He was a passionate believer in the League of Nations and in the principle that all nations—great powers and small powers alike—should be treated equally under international law.

This message resonated powerfully with Chinese diplomats. They were fighting to end the Unequal Treaties, to be treated as equals. When Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, Beneš's argument that nations should band together under the League to resist aggression seemed directly relevant to China's situation.

In practice, though, Beneš's vision had geographic limits.

He saw collective security as a mechanism for getting the great powers to defend Czechoslovakia. Extending that principle to Asia—to defending China against Japan—would distract attention from Europe and leave Czechoslovakia vulnerable to Germany. So Czechoslovakia's support for China during the Manchurian crisis was mostly rhetorical. Beneš deplored Japanese aggression. He did nothing more.

The Pivot of 1938

Everything changed in June 1938.

Germany had been playing both sides, selling weapons to China while also cultivating Japan. That month, the Reich made its choice. It ceased arms sales to China and withdrew its military mission. Germany was now backing Japan.

Chinese attitudes toward Czechoslovakia warmed immediately. The enemy of my enemy, as the saying goes.

One Chinese officer, Li Ban, had been serving with the Wehrmacht—the German armed forces. Disgusted by Germany's decision to support Japan, he transferred to the Czechoslovak Army in July 1938. He became the one and only Asian in the entire Czechoslovak military. Li declared that he would fight alongside Czechoslovakia if Germany invaded.

Two months later, at Munich, Britain and France handed the Sudetenland to Hitler, and Czechoslovakia began its dismemberment. Li Ban's willingness to fight became moot.

A Book Called "China Must Win"

In 1938, while the crisis over Czechoslovakia was building, Minister Liang published a book in German with the title China muss siegen—China Must Win. In it, he wrote carefully about "the process of persecution done in the name of Gleichschaltung"—the Nazi policy of forced coordination—"such as we see being done in certain undemocratic countries."

It was a pointed comment, made while Liang was stationed in a country that would soon be swallowed by those same undemocratic forces.

Yet his son observed that Liang Lone probably didn't share quite the same visceral horror of Nazi Germany that Czechoslovak leaders like Masaryk and Beneš felt. Like many Kuomintang politicians of his generation, the elder Liang was "still a Confucian at heart, a believer in China's ancient culture, always more inclined to compromise with a Chinese warlord than to become involved with a foreign government."

Beneš, by contrast, prioritized good relations with neighboring countries above all else, hoping that peace would give the minorities in his small republic time to unite into one national community. For a small country surrounded by potential enemies, there was no room for the long-game thinking that came naturally to Chinese statesmen.

Spiritual Resistance Through Chinese Poetry

In October and November 1939, students at Charles University in Prague protested against the German occupation. The Nazi response was brutal. The Reichsprotektor, Baron Konstantin von Neurath, ordered all Czech-language universities in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia closed.

But one institution slipped through: the Orient Institute in Prague.

Founded in 1922 to promote knowledge about Asia, the Orient Institute wasn't technically a university, so Neurath's order didn't apply. It continued offering evening courses on Mandarin Chinese and various aspects of Chinese culture.

These courses became unexpectedly popular.

Young Czechs began attending not primarily to learn Chinese, but as an act of what they called "spiritual resistance." Nazi propaganda portrayed Czechs as a "dumb" people fit only for menial labor. By gathering to hear lectures about Chinese philosophy and poetry, young Czechs were rejecting that characterization. They were demonstrating that they still hungered for knowledge and learning despite what the occupiers claimed.

The star lecturer was Jaroslav Průšek, a scholar who had traveled extensively in China during the early 1930s. Průšek twice turned down offers to teach at German universities during the war, which only added to his mystique among Czech students.

My Sister China

Průšek's wartime translations of Chinese poetry became unlikely bestsellers in occupied Prague. They featured introductory essays that painted a highly romantic picture of China—a land whose values were shaped by ancient Confucian philosophy, which placed personal morality and decency above all else.

In 1940, he published Sestra moje Čína—My Sister China—a memoir of his travels in China during 1932-1934. The book portrayed the Chinese as a people eager to embrace modernity but unwilling to abandon their ancient heritage. Many Czech readers saw an obvious parallel to their own situation under occupation.

Most pointedly, Průšek emphasized that Confucianism was a humanistic philosophy that rejected violence. He noted that in Chinese society, soldiers had low status while intellectuals had high status.

Everyone understood this was an implied criticism of the Nazi occupiers, who glorified military might and treated intellectuals with contempt.

After the War

When the war ended, Charles University established a department of Far Eastern Philology and History, and in 1947 Průšek became its first full-time professor. The wartime interest in China had created an institutional legacy.

Liang Lone returned to Prague in 1946, this time with the elevated title of ambassador rather than minister. He donated a large collection of Chinese books to Charles University and sponsored two art exhibitions featuring Chinese works. It seemed like the beginning of a new chapter in cultural exchange.

Then came February 1948.

The Communist coup—the "Velvet coup," as some called it—transformed Czechoslovakia into a Soviet satellite state. Initially, relations continued normally. Liang remained in Prague as the ambassador of the Republic of China (the Nationalist government).

But in the fall of 1948, the Communist Xinhua News Agency opened one of its European offices in Prague. The writing was on the wall.

On October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong proclaimed the People's Republic of China. Five days later, Czechoslovakia became one of the first nations to recognize the new Communist government, breaking off relations with the Nationalist Republic of China that Liang represented.

The personal chapter of the Liang family's connection to Prague was over. A new era—of Communist solidarity, ideological alignment, and state-directed relations—was beginning.

Echoes and Ironies

Looking back across this history, certain patterns emerge.

Small nations and large nations often misunderstand each other because they experience time differently. Czechoslovakia lived in constant fear of sudden destruction; China had learned to absorb losses and think in longer cycles. This created different diplomatic reflexes, different risk tolerances, different definitions of victory and defeat.

Cultural exchange often flows in unexpected directions. Czech scholars were fascinated by China when Chinese scholars barely noticed Czechoslovakia. Yet that asymmetry created something valuable—a body of Czech expertise on Chinese culture that would persist through decades of political transformation.

And sometimes the most meaningful resistance to tyranny takes forms that seem almost absurd. Young Czechs attending evening lectures on Chinese poetry to prove they weren't the "dumb" people Nazi propaganda claimed them to be—it sounds like a footnote, a curiosity. But it was a way of keeping something essential alive.

The younger Liang, looking back on his father's six years in Prague, wrote:

I like to think that the six happy years that Liang Lone—and indeed our whole family—spent in Prague between 1933 and 1939 made for a rapprochement between China and Czechoslovakia that was good for both countries.

He couldn't speak for Czechoslovakia, he admitted. But on the Chinese side, he saw "a growing appreciation for the democratic ideas of President Masaryk and President Beneš."

Those ideas didn't survive the subsequent decades intact—not in Czechoslovakia under Soviet domination, not in China under Mao. But they persisted as memories, as reference points, as evidence that things had once been different and might be different again.

In 1989, Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution ended Communist rule. In 1993, the country peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Relations with China continued through all these transformations, shaped by commerce and geopolitics and the accumulated weight of decades.

Today, the relationship has grown complicated again. Since 2018, tensions have increased as the Czech Republic has strengthened ties with Taiwan—the successor to that Republic of China whose ambassador once walked through Stromovka Park with his young son, teaching him about the shifting powers of Eurasia.

History, as they say, doesn't repeat. But it does rhyme.