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Painting The Town Red For China
PARIS: The Chinese president is in town today and the French are desperately sucking up to their new friend. In the light of peace-loving French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin's plea that the EU should lift its arms embargo on China, perhaps it is time to revisit an article on EU-China relations EURSOC published last year.
In an article in October entitled Friends like these we noted that Europe's left cannot contain its excitement that China may one day reach economic and military parity with the United States. The prospect that America could be challenged by an aggressive competitor across the Pacific has some anti-Americans wetting themselves with anticipation.
EURSOC wrote:
European leftists, perhaps nostalgic for the days when the Soviet Union provided the US with a counterweight, pray for this day. Unlike the Soviet Empire, China does not threaten Europe, at least not directly. China's sphere of influence is vast, but the chances of Beijing installing a puppet government in Brussels or Berlin are slight, at least for now.
(...)
The EU and China have been working on joint nuclear research. France and Germany - who else? - have led calls for closer diplomatic and military ties.
According to the (Daily) Telegraph, France's defence minister Michele Alliot-Marie wants to share sensitive military information with China. France also wants to soften the embargo on weapons sales imposed after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Those calling for a unified EU defence policy please note: China, that beacon of freedom and human rights, is what your masters have in mind as an ally to balance the dangerous Atlanticism of the British and the eastern European states.
The ban on arms sales to China dates to the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when China's armed forces shot numerous democracy protestors and later imprisoned many more.
Fifteen years after the atrocity, France welcomes the Chinese president Hu Jintao to Paris. To celebrate China's ruling party, the Eiffel Tower was bathed in red light - a symbolic gesture of support that should not be lost on the Tiananmen Square survivors and their families.
