Australia and Lithuania have warned of "weaponised" economic sanctions by China in the future.
At a joint press conference with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Lithuania's Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis accused China and Russia of disrupting the "global order", allowing powerful states to bully weaker ones.
"For quite a while Australia was one of the main examples when China was using economy and trade as a political instrument, or one might say even as a political weapon. Now Lithuania joins this exclusive club", Landsbergis, who held bilateral talks with his Australian counterpart, said on Wednesday.
Landsbergis warned China about counter-steps by countries like Lithuania and Australia to help them "withstand the coercion and not give into political and economic pressures".
Australian Foreign Minister Payne supported the argument made by her Lithuanian counterpart, and said that once more countries talk about the importance of an international rules-based order, "the more we are sending the strongest possible message about our rejection of coercion and our rejection of authoritarianism".
Yet, Payne categorically stated that the Morrison government is not considering renaming its Taipei office to Taiwan office.
China has taken extreme economic measures, such as blocking Lithuanian exports, in "defence of its legitimate rights" after the Lithuanian government allowed Taiwan to open the "Taiwanese Representative Office" in Vilnius last November.
China has urged Lithuania to face up to the "objective facts, mend its ways, and come back to the right track of adhering to the "One-China principle".
"The so-called 'coercion' of China against Lithuania is purely made out of thin air. It should stop confounding right with wrong and maliciously hyping things up, let alone trying to rope other countries into ganging up on China", Zhao Lijian, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said on Tuesday.
Australia, which has also incurred trade losses with China since 2020, hopes to gain momentum against Beijing's economic measures this week as Marise Payne will meet with the foreign ministers of India, Japan, and the US under the Quad framework in Melbourne on 11 February.