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Li plays European

card against US

PARIS: Mixing well-aimed verbal barbs with his signature on a hefty contract, Chinese Premier Li Peng used his visit to France to cold-shoulder Washington and tempt Europeans with a larger share in China's booming economy.

Li played a European card against the United States to the delight of French officials, who had hoped the five-day trip would improve Beijing's political and commercial links with Europe.

Despite an embarrassing diplomatic clash over human rights, Li's trip, which ended on Saturday, came close to French expectations in yielding business deals totalling some two billion dollars at a time of tense China-U.S. ties.

The biggest, a $1.5 billion purchase of 30 European Airbus A320 short-haul aircraft, gave the European consortium a toehold in a Chinese aerospace market dominated by the U.S. company Boeing.

It signalled Chinese displeasure at Washington's stand on trade issues and nuclear non-proliferation, and its virulent criticism of recent Chinese wargames near Taiwan.

Li drove his anti-U.S. message home twice during his French stay. In his only speech, to an audience of businessmen, he accused Washington of blocking China's entry into the World Trade Organisation and threatened to favour European business if it did not change tack.

Asked whether the French deals indirectly punished the U.S., he told a television interviewer a few hours later: "We want to maintain normal ties with all of the countries of the world including the United States.

"After the end of the Cold War, there was peace. But if there is only one superpower in the world, a single nation that seeks to impose its will, the world will become more dangerous."

Adding that Europe had a bigger population than the United States as well as state-of-the-art techonology and huge financial potential, he acknowledged that at times "the pendulum can swing to one side".

"For China, our country counts," said Alain Peyrefitte, who wrote the bestseller "When China Awakens" in the early 1970s.

"This is because of our presence as permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, our role in Europe, and our technological performance," he wrote in the pro-government daily Le Figaro.

But the value of the French contracts fell well short of the bonanza reaped by German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Beijing in 1994. European companies still have much ground to catch up.

Boeing still has a more than 90 percent share of the Chinese civil aviation market. It was a Boeing plane that flew Li and his entourage to and from France.

Away from the huge and high-profile contracts, many European small and medium-sized companies have lost the competitive edge to their North American counterparts.

"Franco-Chinese relations are built on inequality because we give them credits and French goods are not very competitive on the Chinese market," China expert Jean-Luc Domenach, professor at the Political Sciences institute, told Reuters.

"If the business deals do turn out (to be) huge, then two factors have to change for this to be not just a temporary miracle. China must profoundly change its attitude to France, and secondly French industry should be more competitive," he said.

French diplomacy paid a heavy price for the deals. Prime Minister Alain Juppe dropped a speech planned for a banquet after his guest objected in a 90-minute wrangle to a passage mentioning human rights, albeit in mild terms.

There at least, Li put France and the United States on an equal footing.

"What we cannot tolerate is nations which try to interfere in our affairs under the pretext of human rights," said the premier, denounced by human rights groups for the bloody crushing of the 1989 student-led democracy movement.-Reuter