Enlarge imageBy Chris Buckley
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao will use a visit to Europe this month to press the theme that China is a "peacefully developing" power that should not be subject to an EU arms ban, Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said on Friday.
The European Union had planned to remove the ban, imposed after China’s suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests, this year, but fierce U.S. and Japanese pressure and Chinese threats of force against Taiwan prompted a rethink.
"The weapons ban should have been thrown into the rubbish bin of history long ago," Li told reporters. He said the ban worked against "mutually beneficial cooperation" but he dismissed the possibility that China would offer concessions on human rights to persuade the European Union to lift it.
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Hu visits Britain, Germany, Spain and South Korea from November 8 to 17 and then attends an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders’ meeting in Pusan, South Korea.
His tour comes at a time when China is particularly active on the international stage. Beijing hosts six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear crisis programme next week and plays host to U.S. President George W. Bush from November 19.
Hu’s discussions in Seoul are likely to cover the nuclear talks, which may take a recess for the APEC meeting. In Spain, Li said, the president would sign a series of agreements to strengthen trade and political cooperation.
But analysts said they expected no major breakthroughs from Hu’s European visit. Prime Minister Tony Blair held talks with Hu in Beijing in September, and Hu’s three days in London are largely taken up with ceremonial events. And Germany’s new coalition government is still finding its feet.
Britain, which currently holds the chair -- and agenda -- of the European Union, has made it clear it will not act on Chinese demands to lift the EU ban on arms sales. Germany’s likely next chancellor, Angela Merkel, has also resisted resuming sales.
SOFTER LIGHT
Foreign Minister Li said China objected to the "political discrimination" entailed in the ban, and he has previously said that China will not actually buy arms.
Britain and other European countries see China’s rise in a softer light than the Bush administration, which opposes selling military items to China, said Andrew Small, a Beijing-based researcher for the Foreign Policy Centre, a think-tank supported by Blair.
"There’s a fair degree of consensus in the EU on China, but it comes down to politics and the need to maintain close relations with Washington," he said of Britain’s position.
But with booming Chinese exports to Europe, trade threatens to become increasingly contentious for London and Berlin.
"At the policy level, China and India are the big issues," said Katinka Barysch, an analyst of Chinese-European relations at the Centre for European Reform, a think-tank in London.
Earlier this year, China and Europe were embroiled in a dispute over China’s surging textile exports, which took off after the lifting of global textile quotas on January 1.
In June, the EU and China signed an agreement limiting further growth in Chinese textile exports to up to 12.5 percent till 2008, and then in September they signed a further agreement, when confusion over quota rules threatened to derail the deal.
By July, Germany’s trade with China had grown to 29.6 billion euros for the year to date, a rise of 8 percent on the same time last year. British trade with China grew to 14.8 billion euros, an increase of 18 percent. But Barysch said China’s growth did not yet loom as a divisive political issue in Europe.
"Americans seem to talk of nothing but the China threat, but people in Europe are not really fully aware how China is reshaping the international division of labour," said Barysch.
"People here are more worried about Eastern Europe."
