China holds back its contempt

At the end of last week, the European Parliament found itself in a tight spot. Having made the courageous gesture of naming Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia this year’s receipient of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, the EU had to wonder how receptive would China be at the 43 country Asia-Europe Meeting over the weekend. China’s cooperation was critical in addressing the global financial crisis. Meanwhile, the Chinese ambassador to the EU penned a stern letter vowing that Hu’s award would “inevitably hurt the Chinese people once again and bring serious damage to China-EU relations.”

But the summit came and went and no such damage was done. China agreed to back more vigorous regulatory reforms, and said nothing more about the Hu issue. So where was the pressure? If indeed it’s an outrage that the EU should cast a spotlight on a man who has “libeled the Chinese political and social systems, and instigated subversion of the state, which is a crime under Chinese law,” then the meeting would have been a perfect occassion for China to brandish some new-found might.

But China seems to have lost its stomach for these tiffs lately. German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s meeting with the Dalai Lama in September 2007 was met with similar threats to block German companies from doing business in China. But the only punitive measures that China took were to boycott a few meetings in Germany and cancel a handful of ministerial visits. Token efforts at best and trade certainly didn’t suffer. Ditto for Canada after Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s visit with the Dalai Lama last year.

Saving face is important for China. But while the government clearly finds foreign criticism humiliating, it doesn’t want to put a blight on its future in the global economy, of which it aspires to be a heavyweight player. It’s also possible that China is just tallying up its resentments for the right moment. If one day China is in a secure enough position to wield economic and political leverage over Europe, it may not be as conciliatory because of the slights it has received along the way.

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