Lithuania's Taiwan policy: navigating the EU-China dynamic

Abstract

The author examines what values and messages appeared in the press releases of Lithuania and the European Union in the period from January 1, 2019 to January 1, 2024 related to the one-China policy which is a one of the frameworks under which the of the European Union's Common Security and Defence Policy operates. In order to research the topic, the following research questions were asked: 1. To what extent do Lithuania and the European Union present coherent or divergent statements on Taiwan? 2. How did the EU address Lithuania's move within the framework of its relations with China? In the empirical part of the work, qualitative content analysis was used and a coding table was created to sort the data. There were 103 press releases and official statements in the sample of this master thesis, of which 49 were press releases from Lithuanian and 54 from European Union agencies. As a result of the work, the tonality, main messages and values were dissected and analysed. The analysis also included the application of two small state theories (Long, 2005) (Nasra, 2011) and contexualising the statements through them.