Xi’s Visit to Britain Highlights Broader Shift in Concerns About China
By STEVEN ERLANGER

LONDON — The visit to Britain by President Xi Jinping of China is underscoring how European nations are de-emphasizing human rights and security concerns as they compete to benefit from China’s growing economic might.

Prime Minister David Cameron and his chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, have muted public criticism of Chinese political, military and human rights behavior since 2012, and during Mr. Xi’s visit here over the past several days, they have highlighted how increased trade and investment can create more British jobs.

But the shifting European calculations about the allure of doing business with China are hardly limited to Britain, and extend to Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, among other countries. Berlin, too, has been assiduous in its courtship of Beijing and has been hardly strident in its comments on China’s domestic abuses of human rights or its growing military might in Asia.

Having built a dynamic economy on exports of advanced industrial goods, especially automobiles, Germany’s growth has been partly tied to that of China, which is now its second-largest market, after France.

German exports to China reached 74.5 billion euros, or $84.6 billion, in 2014 — and represented nearly half of the European Union’s total exports to China of €164.7 billion, according to the European Commission. (European Union imports from China were worth €302.5 billion.)

Some large and politically influential German companies are particularly tied to China. Volkswagen, for instance, before its recent admission about cheating on diesel emission standards, got nearly 65 percent of its profit from China, and Daimler, which owns Mercedes, is also heavily invested there, its sales hurt lately by Mr. Xi’s crackdown on corruption and lavish gift-giving.

In a real sense, Britain’s push now for a “golden era” with China, as Mr. Cameron put it, is in direct competition with Germany and, to a lesser degree, France, a country that has been generally more outspoken in its criticism of China.

Germany’s total of about 45 percent of European Union exports to China dwarfs Britain’s 10 percent and France’s 9 percent. And Germany is the only European Union country, besides Finland, to have a positive trade balance with Beijing. Britain, by contrast, has by far the largest trade deficit with China of the five largest bloc economies, about €11.4 billion.

Mr. Osborne in particular sees Britain’s future as a trading nation tied up with a rising and wealthy China. He has made great efforts to praise Beijing and even “take a bit of a risk with the China relationship,” as he said, by visiting the restive Xinjiang region, where Uighur separatists have been repressed by the central government.

Britain, Mr. Osborne said, wanted to be “China’s best partner in the West,” even as the Chinese economy is slowing, and he has tried to prove it, causing frustration and even anger in Washington, especially as Mr. Xi has cracked down on dissent and censored the Internet.

China, like Russia, regards the European Union as an artificial political construct and emphasizes bilateral relations with different countries, sometimes setting one off against another.

Germany, too, has not been above putting its economic interests before those of other Europeans. In one prominent example, the country undermined the position of the European Commission last year in a tariff dispute with China over the import or “dumping” of cheap solar panels. Germany was not alone in opposition, but it weakened the commission’s negotiating stance before a minimum price for the panels was set.

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany has also been accused of playing down human rights for economic interests, and she inevitably brings with her to China high-level German business representatives.

But she has been more outspoken about noneconomic issues than the British have been. Being more important to China than Britain, and given its history, Germany does not keep entirely silent about Chinese abuses, but the criticism is rarely public. Mr. Xi made a major visit to Berlin in 2014 and praised Berlin and Beijing as “two pillars of growth in Asia and Europe.”

Ms. Merkel briefs reporters on her conversations with the Chinese, which inevitably include at least nominal discussions about human rights and especially cybersecurity and the Chinese hacking of German companies.

But she, too, has modulated her voice. In 2007, she met with the Dalai Lama, but China reacted angrily, and in the years after, according to Der Spiegel, she has largely kept her criticism private and has not made many public gestures toward dissidents, earning praise from the Chinese government’s English-language mouthpiece, Global Times.

“Merkel once took the lead among European leaders in meeting the Dalai Lama,” the newspaper wrote in 2012. “Germany has the ability to lead a more independent diplomacy in global politics. It should not bury itself in old Europe.”

On her visit to Beijing last year (her seventh since 2005), Ms. Merkel made a careful speech at a university referring to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the need for “free dialogue,” noting that Germany and China have a continuing forum on human rights. But that forum, like the similar one that the European Union has with China, has produced little of substance.

Last year, in response to Ms. Merkel, the Chinese prime minister, Li Keqiang, was quick to point out that China and Germany were “both victims of hacking attacks,” a clear reference to revelations by Edward J. Snowden about American cyberespionage against the two countries.

Concerted efforts have helped in certain human rights cases, like a joint European call for the release of a Chinese dissident artist, Ai Weiwei. But then the British Embassy in China initially refused Mr. Ai a visa, on questionable grounds, to visit Britain in the period in which Mr. Xi would be here. After Mr. Ai protested and there was a public uproar, Britain relented and apologized.

Mr. Ai told Sky News this week that “the British prime minister has had a record on putting human rights aside, which is very bad strategy and also is a very bad aesthetics, because this certainly doesn’t represent the British people.”

In a paper last December for the European Council on Foreign Relations, François Godement, a noted French expert on China, called for more European Union unity on human rights. The weakness of European efforts, he said, stems from “China’s use of its economic leverage, Europe’s current crisis of confidence and the crowding out of Chinese human rights issues by pressing geopolitical concerns closer to Europe.”

The failure of Europe’s human rights approach to China is documented, he noted, in a 2014 study by Katrin Kinzelbach, “The E.U.’s Human Rights Dialogue With China: Quiet Diplomacy and Its Limits.” The study describes quiet diplomacy but also the active opposition of China, including the last-minute cancellation of meetings and the execution of a man whose case was raised by Brussels the same morning a human rights dialogue was starting in Beijing.

“Kinzelbach asks the difficult question — where did Europe’s quiet diplomacy have an impact?” Mr. Godement writes, noting the constant compromise between professed European values and economic expediency.

She quotes a European participant who explained: “I am not aware that the E.U. has demanded results,” adding, “It is just a venue for us to express concern.”

紐時：中國「誘惑」大 歐盟競相討好

中國國家主席習近平訪英受到高規格禮遇。「紐約時報」指出，隨著歐盟各國競相從中國日益增長的經濟實力中獲益，凸顯這些國家如何漠視中國的人權和安全問題。也有美國專家指出，沒有人不受到中國的誘惑，這並不是一件壞事，但那麼多聲明和承諾能否實現則需拭目以待。

報導提及，自2012年以來，英國首相卡麥隆和財政大臣奧斯本(George Osborne)即減少公開批評中國的政治、軍事和人權問題。這次習訪英，雙方更只關注經貿議題。

據報導，這種擋不住的經濟誘惑不限於英國，包括歐盟經濟強權德國也一樣。柏林當局對中國的人權問題及其在亞洲不斷增長的軍事實力幾乎不再出現刺耳抨擊。根據統計，2014年德國對中出口達到745億歐元，幾占歐盟對中國出口總額的一半。中國目前是德國第二大市場，僅次於法國。

「紐時」分析，從現實層面來看，英國現在推動與中國所謂的「黃金時代」關係，說穿了是與德直接競爭，某種小程度也是與法競爭。法國迄今仍是較直言不諱批評中國的國家。

報導還說，和俄羅斯一樣，中國也把歐盟看作是人為的政治實體，著重與歐盟各國發展雙邊關係，有時甚至誘使某一國與另一國作對。

不少人指責德國總理梅克爾(Angela Merkel)出於經濟利益，淡化中國的人權問題。她本月底又將訪問中國。梅克爾訪中時，總免不了帶著德國企業主同行。德國目前占對中國進出口貿易總額的第六位，遠高過英國，雙邊經貿關係不斷增長。美國是中國最大貿易夥伴。

「德國之聲」引述美國布魯金斯研究院專家勒科爾(Philippe Le Corre)解釋，現實是中國已成為全球第二大貿易國家，擁有許多大型跨國公司，其中一些已屬於全球資產最雄厚的企業。人民幣日益成為國際化的貨幣，中國的荷包很充實。加上中國本身也願意走向國際舞台，不管是歐洲、美國還是其他國家，都希望和中國坐在一條船上。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/23/world/europe/xis-visit-to-britain-highlights-broader-shift-in-concerns-about-china.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯
http://cn.nytimes.com/china/20151023/c23britain/zh-hant/

Video：Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain and President Xi Jinping of China on Thursday went for drinks after meetings at the prime minister’s country retreat.
http://www.nytimes.com/video/world/asia/100000003994509/chinese-and-british-leaders-stop-by-pub.html

Graphic：Why China Is Rattling the World
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/08/26/business/-why-china-is-rattling-the-world-maps-charts.html

2015-10-25 世界日報 中國新聞組