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Wen Jiabao, China's premier, yesterday began a tour of European capitals that will explore ways to involve China in efforts to tackle the world's economic crisis. unJid8Lo
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Beijing, which has described Mr Wen's trip as a “tour of confidence,” hopes it will help dispel some of the questions about the impact of the crisis on China's rapidly slowing economy. There are also hopes that it will boost relations damaged by the cancellation of a EU-China summit last month. iqQUtE]E_
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EU representatives, keen to secure Chinese co-operation to overcome the global downturn, are pleased that Mr Wen is to meet members of the Brussels-based European Commission en bloc, a gesture which they said showed that China's leaders were paying more attention to how EU institutions work. {qW~"z*
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Mr Wen's itinerary takes in the World Economic Forum in Davos as well as Brussels, Berlin, London and Madrid. But it excludes Paris, in an apparent sign of disapproval of a meeting Nicolas Sarkozy, France's president, held last year with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader. That meeting prompted Beijing to cancel the EU-China summit in early December. |6UtW{2I/
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“It's good that the Chinese are taking the EU institutions seriously,” Graham Watson, leader of the liberals in the European parliament, told reporters. “The weakness of their position is the belief that they can split the Europeans by pointedly not visiting Paris.” !UOCJj.cA
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Mr Wen is expected to make the case that China's main contribution to resolving the economic crisis will be to maintain relatively high growth, fuelled partly by a fiscal spending plan. TSA U?r\P
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“Demand from China and its economic growth will serve as an impetus for [the] world economy to recover from the downturn,” said a commentary by the official Xinhua news agency yesterday on Mr Wen's trip. Chinese officials are keen to avoid a broader debate about the role of currency and trade issues. Although China has run record trade surpluses during the past three months, fuelling the arguments of critics who claim its currency is undervalued, the government is under pressure at home to weaken the renminbi in order to help struggling exporters. =cN&A_L(
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Officials are still smarting at comments by Timothy Geithner, the new US Treasury secretary, who told a Senate hearing last week that China was “manipulating” its currency. China's commerce ministry said, in an unusually prompt and sharply worded response, the allegation was untrue and could encourage US protectionist sentiment. ,:~0F^z
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Some EU officials take the view that China's trade surplus with Europe will prove politically unsustainable in the long run, with a backlash among European politicians, business people and voters more likely the longer it continues.
