EU Chief Regrets China’s Decision to Cancel Summit
The president of the European Commision has said he “regrets” China’s decision to pull out of the summit with EU leaders after French President Sarkozy announced a visit with the Dalai Lama. From AP:
Jose Manuel Barroso says the Chinese are “ultra-sensitive” about the Dalai Lama but that summits offer the right forum to discuss such matters.
China said Thursday that Sarkozy’s planned meeting with the Tibetan religious leader in Poland left it no choice but to pull out of this week’s summit in France.
Barroso stressed in an interview Sunday on France’s LCI TV station that he doesn’t want such differences to “contaminate the entire relationship” with China, but that it is “totally natural” for European politicians to meet with the Dalai Lama.
Meanwhile, the official media in China has quoted scholars saying the Sarkozy-Dalai Lama meeting threatens trade, AP reports:
Statements by Feng Zongping, appearing Saturday in the official China Daily newspaper, mark the latest display of China’s determination to intimidate Sarkozy and scare other foreign heads of state away from holding meetings with Tibet’s exiled Buddhist leader.
Trade retaliation is one of the most potent weapons in China’s arsenal, and China’s decision to pull out of a summit with the European Union that was to have begun Monday in France has already prompted hand-wringing among French business leaders. More than 150 Chinese business executives had been expected to meet with European counterparts at an event on the summit’s sidelines organized by the French employers’ lobby Medef.
France has “underestimated China’s resolution to protect its sovereignty,” said Feng, who is the European studies director at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. Feng’s institute is associated closely with the Foreign Ministry.
POSTED COMMENTS: 3 Responses
The strength of the PRC’s hand to use trade as a diplomatic weapon is vastly overstated by some. In these commentators’ fervid imaginations they see the PRC as a vast economic power house which the world must fear. This has got to be one of the CCP’s propaganda department’s greatest successes. If anyone has been paying attention these last 30 years they would have noticed that the West’s trade with the PRC has not improved the Wests’ standard of living one bit. Personally, I’ve seen the quality of products go down, though not their prices. On the other hand, the PRC has gone from a definitely economically backward country to potentially an economically developed country. Is it necessary to say that the PRC needs the West, but the West does not need the PRC? The PRC is bluffing, of course, trying to take advantage of British Foreign Secretary David Milibrand’s blunder in dismissing the Shimla Convention as an ‘anachronism’, and is hoping to turn this blunder into a major propaganda victory by getting the EU to toe the line as well. The weakness that the West has is that corporate interests, that have manufacturing in the PRC, or imagine that it will become a market for their products, have too much influence in the West’s various national governments. These corporations’ particular needs and wishes have been pushed over the well being of our respective nations.
As md says, China, even the CCP for its political survival based on delivering economic success, needs the West more than the West needs China.
It only takes a repeated firm commitment to stand with Western values as it is being demonstrated now by Sarkozy and the EU (and has been demonstrated earlier by Bush) for the CCP to realize eventually that its knee-jerking is not going to get it anywhere.
It has the power to lock-up and re-educate Tibetans in China ruthlessly but it doesn’t have that power outside of China…
And the West has to pull that plug firmly. Otherwise the CCP will really think it can do as it pleases.
You don’t want a spoilt brat of that size bullying the whole world eventually.
As md says, China, even the CCP for its political survival based on delivering economic success, needs the West more than the West needs China.
Well after their bloated ego punctured by corruption and mismanaged of economy Now the west beat on the chest and saying that China need them Well I say China doesn’t need the west because most of investment in China come from overseas Chinese and NOT FROM THE WEST I SAY GO TOHELL WITH THE WEST