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Sarkozy bungles Beijing game

By Charles Bremner

As Nicolas Sarkozy flies to the Olympics opening, he is being hammered in France for flip-flop behaviour that has let Beijing humilitate him.

China has got Sarkozy’s number, le Monde said this afternoon. “He has lost on all fronts: whether human rights or the international image of France or its relations with the Chinese authorities.”

Sarko’s unfortunate Chinese gambit began in the spring when, under domestic pressure, he threatened to boycott the Olympics opening ceremony unless Beijing resumed dialogue with the Dalai Lama. Other leaders voiced criticism over Tibet and human rights, but none made the Olympics link. Britain’s Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel of Germany was never planning to go to the opening.

The Chinese were also upset by the very rough passage of the Olympic torch through Paris and French establishment sympathy for the protestors. China retaliated with an anti-French boycott. Then Sarko sent three emissaries to Beijing to apologize and announced that he would go to the Beijing ceremony in his capacity as current president of the European Union. But, he said, he would meet the Dalai Lama in Paris on his return.

Beijing then took the extraordinary step of having its Paris ambassador publicly warn Sarkozy that there would be serious consequences if he did any such thing. The ambassador — a graduate of the ENA, the French high civil service school — was hauled into the French Foreign Ministry and reprimanded for interfering in French affairs. Sarko himself told the European parliament that Beijing could not push him around and would never dictate his diary.

On Wednesday, before leaving for China, Sarko caved in and called off the meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader. Carla Bruni — Mrs Sarkozy — will instead meet him at a Buddhist ceremony in the south of France in late August.

Sarkozy says that the meeting was postponed by agreement with the Dalai Lama in order to avoid raising tension with Beijing at a delicate time. His office has announced today that he has transmitted to the Chinese authorities a list of dissidents about whom French campaigners are concerned. At the same time, he has given an interview to Chinese media in which he celebrates “the historic, indestructible, unshakable friendship” between Paris and Beijing.

Super Sarko has come out of this episode looking foolish. Brown and Merkel have both held talks with the Dalai Lama and spoken out on rights in recent months and neither are attending the opening, but Beijing did not punish them. Sarkozy showed weakness by blowing hot and cold. “It would have been better to have refrained from puffing up his chest for a few weeks before travelling to Canossa,” said le Monde. In China, anti-French bloggers are jeering at Sarko, calling him a “paper tiger”.

Pierre Haski, Editor of the Rue89 news site, calls it “the most serious diplomatic failure by Sarkozy since his election.” Those are views from Sarko’s usual critics, but few outside his own political camp are defending his bungled China venture. A French diplomat friend summed it up to me as “Beijing 1, Sarkozy 0”.

Copyright © 2008 Charles Bremner

Published in TypePad.com