Minister of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan, trade delegation visiting Prague | World news

PRAGUE (Reuters) – Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu and a trade delegation will visit Prague from October 23-27, the Czech Taiwanese Chamber of Commerce said on Tuesday, further indication of the warm relations between the Union country European and Autonomous Island.

Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry announced last month that an investment delegation led by a senior minister would visit three countries in Central and Eastern Europe to show gratitude for donations of COVID-19 and other vaccines. supports.

Besides the Czech Republic, the Taiwanese delegation is expected to visit neighboring Slovakia and Lithuania.

Kung Ming-hsin, who heads the National Development Council which is in charge of Taiwan’s industrial development policy, will lead the delegation for the series of meetings focused on high-tech cooperation from October 23 to 26, the chamber said. .

The visit, which includes the arrival of the foreign minister on October 27, is likely to spark a reaction from China, similar to its reprimand from the speaker of the upper house of the Czech parliament, Milos Vystrcil, for his trip to Taipei in September 2020.

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China claims democratic Taiwan as its own territory.

The delegation’s visit is one more step away from the Beijing-oriented foreign policy pushed by Czech President Milos Zeman.

The change comes as the Czech Communists, China’s most staunch ally on the Czech political scene, missed seats in parliament in the October 8-9 election, and Zeman has been out of active politics during recent weeks due to unspecified illness.

(Report by Robert Muller in Prague, edited by Matthew Lewis)