Beijing drops sister city agreement with Prague

Beijing has terminated its sister agreement with Prague and will suspend all official contacts with the Czech capital, the Czech News Agency reported on Thursday quoting a statement from Beijing authorities supplied by the Chinese Embassy in the Czech Republic. The embassy goes on to say that representatives of the Prague coalition had been intentionally interfering in China’s internal affairs and deliberately violated the sister agreement with Beijing.

Earlier this week Prague authorities voted to terminate the city’s agreement with Beijing, after which the Chinese Ambassador to the Czech Republic Zhang Jianmin posted on Facebook that Prague’s own interests will suffer, triggering a reaction from the Czech Foreign Minister Tomáš Petříček, who said that threats have no place in diplomacy.