ABSTRACT

After German chancellor Angela Merkel met the Dalai Lama for a talk at her office in September 2007, Germany’s relations with China went through a period of tension. As a reaction to this, China cancelled some visits of German politicians. Two months after Merkel’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, new French president Nicolas Sarkozy made his first official trip to China and brought back huge business contracts. A year later, the situation was reversed: relations between Beijing and Berlin seemed to be back on track, while France had fallen from Chinese grace due to a meeting of Sarkozy with the Tibetan religious leader. And since at that time, in the second half of 2008, France held the presidency of the European Council, China cancelled (‘postponed’) the annual summit meeting with the EU which had originally been scheduled for 2 December 2008 in Lyon. Thus, the entire European Union was taken hostage of the deteriorating relationship between Beijing and Paris. Early in 2009, China’s Prime Minister Wen Jiabao came to Europe and visited Switzerland, Germany, the EU headquarters in Brussels, Great Britain and Spain. Dubbed ‘tour of confidence’ by China, France was notably absent from Wen’s itinerary.