Written by Wei-Chung Chen.
Image credit: 06.02 總統頒授捷克參議長韋德齊「特種大綬卿雲勳章」 by 總統府/ Flickr, license: CC BY 4.0.
Taiwan’s relations with the Czech Republic have been a well-known story in recent years. Ever since Czech Senate President Miloš Vystrčil’s first visit to Taiwan in 2020, the country has become the headline of Taiwanese media. Many wondered why a nation with a 10-million population turned its back on China and embraced Taiwan. To fully understand the story, we need to look beyond tangible interests and focus on geopolitical anxiety. It offers a new lens to explain the underlying motivation behind the Czech engagement with Taiwan. Once we place this relation under the broader historical and political debates, it becomes clear that Czech engagement with Taiwan is a reflection of its worldview and an attempt to mitigate the anxiety incurred by geopolitical uncertainties.
Geopolitical Anxiety and Czech Politics
Anxiety geopolitics is a discursive strategy that tries to explain political uncertainties with a pre-existing worldview. By doing so, it allows the public to easily understand new political changes and reduce social anxiety, even though such views are sometimes simplified or distorted. In the Czech Republic’s case, this political discourse allocates new actors like Taiwan and China into a geopolitical worldview they are familiar with: a good liberal West and a bad authoritarian East.
This East/West dichotomy is grounded in the Czech historical experiences. After the 1989 Velvet Revolution, the newly gained independence led to anxiety about their identity: it is a region that belongs neither to the East nor to the West. The Czech Republic, as a young democracy, raised the slogan “Return to Europe”, which clearly shows their desire for reintegration with Western institutions and escape from Russian influence. While the integration into the European Union seemed to mark the victory, the geopolitical anxiety lurked and reappeared with new faces. The Russian aggression against Ukraine was reminiscent of the 1968 Soviet intervention in the Prague Spring, when the Czech identity and sovereignty were suppressed by authoritarian rule.
In short, the Czech perceptions of geopolitics seem to accentuate that anxiety is omnipresent and a regular part of life. Yet, it is also human nature to escape from such feelings and seek shelter in certainty. When a new challenge appears, people are unable to break away from the old framework and apply it to those problems. For this reason, Taiwan became a particular flashpoint for Czech politics.
Five Periods of Czech Political Discourse on Taiwan
Against this background, Taiwan and China became the new face of this political dilemma. The pro-Taiwan figures often hold a moralistic view, framing the choice of Taiwan or China as a debate between values or interests. At that time, Czech politics was led by Prime Minister Andrej Babiš and President Miloš Zeman, who saw foreign policy as a pragmatic matter and were eager for a closer relationship with China for its economic potential. Meanwhile, their opponents like Senate President Miloš Vystrčil and then-Prague mayor Zdeněk Hřib saw the government’s stance as yielding to benefits while risking the influence of the authoritarian East. In this context, Taiwan became a political symbol of resistance against the government’s pro-China stance. To better understand the political climate, my research categorised the changes in discourses into five periods since 1989 (see Table 1):
| Category | Time | Main Actors | Outline | Major Events with Taiwan |
| Foundation | 1989-2004 | Vaclav Havel | value-based diplomacy, human rights-focused | establish a representative office, Havel to Taiwan |
| Silence | 2004-2018 | Vaclav Klaus, Miloš Zeman | pragmatic diplomacy, few connections | — |
| Reemergence | 2019-2021 | Andrej Babiš, Jaroslav Kubera, Miloš Vystrčil, Zdeněk Hřib | municipal and parliamentary contacts | Prague-Taipei city agreement, Vystrčil’s first visit to Taiwan |
| Consolidation | 2021-2025 | Petr Pavel, Petr Fiala, Jan Lipavsky, Marketa Pekarova Adamova | return to Havel policy, full-spectrum cooperation (economics, culture, politics) | Adamova’s visit, governmental and civil society cooperation |
| Uncertainty | 2025-now | Petr Pavel, Andrej Babiš, Miloš Vystrčil | misalignment between the president and the government | Vystrčil’s second visit to Taiwan |
Table 1. Periods of Czech Political Discourse on Taiwan
The first president and a former dissident, Václav Havel, placed human rights and democracy at the forefront of foreign policy and paid special attention to issues like Taiwan or Tibet. Havel also visited Taiwan in 2004 under the invitation of Taiwan’s then-president Chen Sui-bien (陳水扁). Nevertheless, this approach was not endorsed by later leaderships of the country. For more than a decade, pragmatic diplomacy prevailed, and Taiwan lost its symbolic importance.
The turning point took place during the “Reemergence” period. The tide shifted in 2019-2020 with two major incidents. First, the city of Prague began to discuss the One China Policy in the sister city agreement with Beijing, which eventually led to the end of the agreement. Prague City Council voted to withdraw, and Beijing immediately responded with its decision to terminate the relationship. Later, Prague mayor Hřib turned to Taipei to formalise their relations as sister cities, and Shanghai terminated its agreement with Prague just one day after it. It is distinctive that Prague-Taipei relations had been profoundly politicised for a matter of municipal and cultural exchange. The decision even led to China’s further retaliation, as Czech musicians’ performances were cancelled in China.
Second, in 2019, Czech Senate President Jaroslav Kubera from the opposition announced his plan to visit Taiwan. This showed a stark contrast to the government’s position to enhance relations with China. Kubera couldn’t materialise his idea due to his sudden death, but his successor as the Senate President, Vystrčil, carried on the plan and visited Taiwan, making him the most important figure in boosting relations. His famous speech “I am a Taiwanese” echoed John F. Kennedy’s words in the Berlin Crisis. It became a political symbol and soon escalated Taiwan’s issue into a geopolitical confrontation. Since 2022, under the new coalition SPOLU and new president Petr Pavel, Czech discourse on Taiwan has become harmonised. Pavel even spoke with Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on a congratulatory phone call. Relations were more institutionalised during this time, which was deepened by the new Czech Centre in Taipei and semiconductor cooperation.
Why Geopolitical Anxiety Matters
Parliamentary visits and municipal agreements are not extraordinary if a country engages with Taiwan. Yet, the Czech episodes stood out for their deeply politicised attitudes on Taiwan. The choice between China and Taiwan was narrated as a matter of identity: the government insisted on China’s enormous interests, while the opposition held Havel’s political legacy of values. Vystrčil and Hřib’s high-profile support of Taiwan explains why Taiwan became a particular flashpoint: this incident was not just “whether we should go to Taiwan” but rather a bigger question of principle: do we allow economic calculation to override identity? Do we allow big nations to bully their small neighbours? The historical experience made the Czech Republic endorse Taiwan as an anti-communist and democratic partner. Taiwan’s emergence has created a new opportunity for the opposition to secure the Czech identity from the pragmatists.
Under this framing, Taiwan is projected as the bulwark to defend liberal democracy. It can be best exemplified by Vystrčil’s speech at National Chengchi University, “The Best Words Are Actions.” This narrative about Taiwan seems to offer a vicarious security for the Czech Republic: by supporting Taiwan, the Czech Republic is doing its job to safeguard liberal democracy and restore Havel’s political legacy. While tangible interests like semiconductor investments certainly incentivised closer relations, looking from the beginning, economic benefits alone can’t explain why the opposition chose such costly and visible actions to turn their back on China, while Taiwan was yet to guarantee anything for their symbolic moves. Geopolitical anxiety transforms Taiwan into a great symbol to locate the pre-existing longing for the liberal West and escape from the authoritarian East.
Looking Ahead: return to anxiety?
In late 2025, Czech relations with Taiwan entered a new phase that signalled another uncertainty after the election. The winning right-wing populist party ANO has been more sceptical about Taiwan’s relations. The current political composition seems to remind us of 2019-2020: a pro-Taiwan opposition and a Taiwan-sceptic government. In June 2026, Vystrčil’s second visit to Taiwan once again aroused frictions with the government. Prime Minister Andrej Babiš refused to provide state flights for this trip, suggesting that the Czech government did not approve the Senate’s plan to visit Taiwan. It will be intriguing to observe whether Taiwan would again become the centre of ideological clash in Czech politics.
In conclusion, Taiwan’s liberal democratic image has evolved into a political symbol to mitigate geopolitical anxiety in Czech politics. Through the Prague-Taipei agreement and the Senate delegation visit in 2020, this democratic discourse came to dominate the international discussion, a name that Taiwan’s government was happy to embrace. However, the future of this relationship is still uncertain with the new Czech government. Perhaps it also provides a useful framework to examine other cases such as Lithuania’s relations with Taiwan, where similar historical backgrounds and polarised perceptions of Taiwan continue to shape the bilateral relations with an uncertain future.
Wei-Chung Chen is a PhD candidate at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. His research focuses on Taiwan’s relations with Central and Eastern Europe. Besides, his theoretical interests are constructivism and critical theory in political studies. He applies philosophical insights such as phenomenology, political theory, and Frankfurt School theories to the analysis of international relations. He also works as a research fellow at the Central European Institute of Asian Studies.