http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/21/europe/france.phpParis mounts diplomatic charm offensive to mollify China
By Katrin Bennhold
PARIS: After a wave of anti-French protests in China, President Nicolas Sarkozy of France is sending three top officials there this week in a hastily assembled diplomatic charm offensive to limit the political and economic fallout from the controversy surrounding the preparations for the Olympic Games.
Thousands of protesters massed in front of Chinese outlets of the French supermarket chain Carrefour over the weekend, demonstrating against what they saw as France's support for pro-Tibet agitators and calling for a boycott of French goods.
France has become the main focus of a string of fiercely nationalistic protests in China, notably after footage of a 27-year-old Chinese athlete in a wheelchair protecting the Olympic torch from protesters as it passed through Paris this month turned her into a national hero and talk show star.
The dispute could herald a new chapter in relations between the West and China, the world's leading emerging economic powerhouse, analysts said. By allowing protests to take place and Web sites to call for a boycott in its tightly controlled state, the leadership in Beijing is for the first time flexing its economic muscle.
"China's self-confidence is growing even faster than its GDP," said Eberhard Sandschneider, a China expert and director of the research institute at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. "We're entering a new phase in Western-Chinese relations. The Chinese are beginning to use their economic power as a lever."
France's swift response suggests that the message has been heard. In addition to sending the three officials, Sarkozy met for an hour Friday in Paris with Zhao Jinjun, a special envoy of President Hu Jintao of China.
The president of the French Senate, Christian Poncelet, arrived in Shanghai on Monday, carrying a letter from Sarkozy that apologized for the events during the torch relay and invited Jin Jing, the disabled Chinese athlete who fended off pro-Tibetan activists during the torch relay, to visit Paris.
On Thursday, a former prime minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, is to arrive, and Friday it will be the turn of Sarkozy's chief diplomatic adviser, Jean-David Levitte, to reassure the Chinese leadership that France has no intention of straining relations.
Since China's clampdown on Tibetan protests in Lhasa, the capital, and nearby regions last month, Western governments have come under increasing pressure to use the Olympic Games as a lever to extract concessions from Beijing on human rights and Tibet. José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, will take up the issue when he visits Beijing on Thursday, a spokesman said Monday.
But with trade between the European Union and China now worth nearly €200 billion, or $320 million, a year, politicians are painfully aware of what is at stake.
The anti-French demonstrations were the most aggressive venting of nationalist fury since a dispute with Japan over history textbooks in 2005. On Saturday, demonstrators painted swastikas on French flags and carried banners calling Jeanne d'Arc a "prostitute" and Napoleon a "pervert."
For the past week, thousands of text messages have called for a boycott of French products, and at least one anti-Carrefour Web site has been created, urging Chinese customers to stay away from its stores.
Sarkozy has said he will attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in August in Beijing only if China begins an official dialogue with the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. China has refused.
On Monday, the president's office stressed that this condition remained in effect.
"It is one of the elements that will determine whether the president attends the opening ceremony," said Franck Louvrier, Sarkozy's director of communications.
But Louvrier acknowledged that it was in France's interest to bring the protests in China to a swift end.
French officials played down the risks of a Chinese boycott of French goods, arguing that Beijing depended more on French consumers than France depended on Chinese consumers. China's exports to France are worth four times as much as French exports to China.
But the concern in the business community was plain. The chief executive of Carrefour, José Luis Durán, told the weekly newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche that China was of "strategic importance" to his company. Carrefour has 112 hypermarkets and more than two million customers in China.
Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, the French luxury goods group, which has been the target of boycott calls, said last week that France should stop trying to teach China lessons.
"I understand why the Chinese population could be affected by the attacks against its country," Arnault said in an interview with Le Figaro. "It may be shocking to see what's happening in Tibet, but it's equally shocking to see China being attacked."
Some French commentators said the fact that "Made in China" goods were becoming ever more common may play a role in the popular anti-Chinese outcry over Tibet and may reflect a broader fear about China's growth and what is perceived by some as the West's relative demise.
"Under the noble defense of our 'universal values,' sometimes a racist stench hides that is quite contrary to the principles we pretend to incarnate," Le Figaro wrote in an editorial Monday. The pro-Tibetan mobilization "is that much stronger because it is fed by a fear of 'Made in China.' "
The European Union's trade deficit with China has been growing rapidly, and China is now considered the biggest threat in all EU countries except Spain, according to David Shambaugh, director of the China Policy Program at George Washington University, and concerns about the migration of jobs to China is on the rise.
But if positive perceptions of China have plummeted across Europe, the political response has not always been the same.
France's situation contrasts with that of Germany, which has the largest economy in Europe and has even more business at stake in China. Chancellor Angela Merkel drew Chinese ire and initially a scaling back of both business and political contacts after she received the Dalai Lama in her Berlin office last autumn.
Now, however, analysts say that Merkel looks smart. She made clear her view on human rights in China, and in a sense that has helped divert any popular anger now toward German businesses dealing with China. Volkswagen, for instance, is one of the major sponsors of the Beijing Olympic Games.
Merkel has made clear she will not go to the Olympic Games, but she is expecting to visit China shortly thereafter.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Frank Walter Steinmeier of Germany, a Social Democrat, apparently also moved swiftly to avert any awkwardness. He let it be known that he was on the phone with his Chinese counterpart for a full hour the day after the protests in Lhasa. The contents of that conversation have not been disclosed.
Steinmeier, who was chief of staff when Merkel's predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, was chancellor, deflected criticism that he was pushing business interests with China rather than addressing human rights concerns by initiating a program to enroll hundreds of Chinese students to study law in Germany.
AfroShanghai
Author