Carrefour in China came under pressure this week, but the French government rushed to the rescue.
Although criticism of the Chinese crackdown in Tibet had been fiercer in places like the United Kingdom and Germany, the combination of the images from the Paris leg of the Olympic torch relay -- where a wheelchair-bound Chinese athlete came under attack by protestors -- and Sarkozy's suggestion he might boycott the Olympic Games opening ceremony had been enough to stir up fierce anti-French sentiment in China.
Sarkozy reacted quickly. On Monday, he sent a message of sympathy to the Chinese athlete involved in the scuffle, Jin Jing, and this week a parade of French emissaries are landing in China, including top Sarkozy diplomatic aide Jean-David Levitte and former Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, carrying messages of conciliation for the Chinese leadership.
However, Paris City Hall's decision to grant the Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama honorary citizenship of the city on Monday risked undermining these efforts, with the Chinese Foreign Ministry immediately criticizing the gesture.
On Wednesday an interview with Raffarin appeared in the China Youth Daily, in which he insisted that this was not official national policy. "While President Sarkozy makes efforts to improve France-China relations, the Paris administration is running in the opposite direction to the French government. This is very bad."
Meanwhile Raffarin told the French daily Le Parisien that this step was "inopportune" and that when he meets with Chinese President Hu Jintao he will assure him of the "continuity" of Franco-Chinese relations. "The message is clear: France's policy toward China is not changing."
The issue of whether Sarkozy will boycott the Olympics opening ceremony is, however, still open. He had previously said that he would attend if China started up a dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Raffarin told Le Parisien on Wednesday that it was "too early" to make a decision. He said Sarkozy planned to consult with European Union partners on whether to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in August. According to Raffarin, he wants his decision to be "coherent" with France's presidency of the EU, which commences on July 1.
The Chinese leadership, meanwhile, seems almost as eager to quell the anti-French sentiment as Paris. On Tuesday the Foreign Ministry praised Sarkozy's gesture of sending the message to Jin as a "friendly move," while an official told China's CCTV news: "We have notice that the French government and companies recently took some actions that are helpful to the improvement of bilateral relations."
The beleaguered Carrefour was also allowed some relief this week. The Chinese government made its first direct comment on the supermarket chain on Tuesday, commending the way it did business and thanking it for supporting the Beijing Olympics. Suddenly on Wednesday, Chinese newspapers were pointing out that 95 percent of the products sold in the supermarket chain in China were made domestically and that it employed 40,000 Chinese people. Meanwhile, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said that while the demonstrations against Carrefour had been "encouraging and touching ... we do not agree with some people's radical actions."
The zeal with which France has rushed to mend relations with China has raised a few eyebrows. German newspapers on Wednesday express some distaste at the way Sarkozy is suddenly sucking up to China.
The left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:
"A few calls for a boycott of a French supermarket in China were enough to cause President Nicolas Sarkozy's commitment to human rights to falter badly. ... Naturally it's easy to talk about freedom when there are no important economic interests at stake. But if it is about civil rights in the giant market that is China, then it is considerably more difficult to stick to big principles."
"The written apology (to athlete Jin Jing) was meant to be more than just symbolic. Sarkozy's emissaries are to reassure the rulers in Beijing of how much the friendship with China means to France and that one must not take the protests against the suppression of human rights and the autonomy of Tibet too seriously."
"By now keeping silent on human rights out of fear of the economic consequences, Sarkozy has lost all credibility. When it took on the task of organizing the Olympic Games, China knew it was running the risk of exposing its handling of dissidents and minorities to international criticism. The fact that the very country that considers itself to be the cradle of human rights has been the first to cave in is, in France itself, unthinkable and a scandal. Sarkozy has exposed himself to the criticism that he talked big about human rights at first but is now chickening out."
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:
"After the Olympic torch was attacked in Paris because of Tibet, Beijing made its wrath felt in Paris and staged 'spontaneous' demonstrations in several cities. Sarkozy has shown that he is prepared to grovel, by immediately sending three top-ranking emissaries to meekly renew France's 'deep ties' with China."
"In reality Sarkozy has maneuvered himself into a position of weakness, where it is now possible to blackmail him. But in fact it is China that should be easy to blackmail, since it exports far more to France than France exports to China. Beijing has more to fear from 'spontaneous' demonstrations than Paris. It could end up losing control of them, just like happened during the anti-Japanese protests in 2005. And for the Olympic hosts, every bad image is a disaster. After all, the ice-cold strategists in Beijing would only hurt themselves if they cancelled contracts."
"Sarkozy's obsequiousness would only be an issue in Paris if it weren’t for the fact that the man without principles is to become the president of the EU on July 1 and, thus, during the Olympic Games. Money matters more than the Olympic honor. What an abysmal overture to France's leadership of Europe."
The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung addresses the issue of China and the West's differing expectations for the Olympics.
"China's leadership and its patriots had long been dreaming of a great Summer Olympics. Now they think the West begrudges them their Olympic Games. Europeans and the Americans are jealous of China's rise, they believe. Under the constant barrage of propaganda the Chinese people feel that the West is injuring their national pride."
"In the West there was a dream that the Olympic Games could act as a Trojan horse that would help to introduce democracy to China. This dream had ended though. The images from Lhasa have turned China into a caricature of evil, that does not at all match the image of the cool boom nation."
"The Europeans and in particular the Germans should now ask themselves self-critically why their images of China are always swinging between two extremes. Either they admire the dynamism of the 'new China,' with its Formula 1 racing in Shanghai and its glittering skylines, or they succumb to a hysterical criticism of China, an almost latent fear of the country. The truth, as is so often the case, lies somewhere in between."
"Neither irrational fear of this land of billions of people, nor a cowardly groveling to its leadership is suitable. Injustice is still injustice, no matter how big or economically successful a country is."
"The Chinese government is now caught in its own trap. They had sold the Chinese people a new nationalism as a replacement ideology for the discredited Marxism-Leninism. And that is why Chinese leaders believe that if they pursue a dialogue with the Dalai Lama or their Western critics, they will lose the support of their own people. ... It is only with honesty that the gap between China and the rest of the world can be bridged. This is a part of modern reality that Beijing still has to learn."
-- Siobhán Dowling, 1:15 a.m. CET
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