Unleashing the dragon

In a sign the country’s ambitions to go faster and bigger have not been dimmed by the Olympics, China is currently building the world’s quickest rail line. But it’s not just the 380km/h Beijing to Shanghai line that’s hurtling towards the record books. So too is the country’s economic and political muscle.

That was the verdict of a recent US government report, ‘Global trends 2025: a transformed world’, which predicts that by 2025, America’s biggest rival will be China.

Members of parliament’s delegation for relations with China last month visited Beijing and Shanghai and got a glimpse of the immense influence the country is set to unleash on the rest of the planet.

During the week-long visit, the 22 MEPs met a cross-section of Chinese political life, including senior Chinese parliamentarians, NGOs and lawyers, as well as EU officials, business and academic staff based in China. To a degree, the diversity of the groups reflects China’s own version of glasnost.

As well as developing at an almost frightening pace - a phenomenon most obviously observed in Shanghai, busy preparing to host the 2010 World Expo - it is also genuinely trying to open up a formerly closed society to the rest of the world.

The various meetings were dominated by China’s response to the global financial crisis and climate change, its newly enacted labour laws, product safety and human rights, arguably the most sensitive subject of all for the Chinese.

Uppermost on the minds of the Chinese was the current economic meltdown: last month the World Bank predicted that in 2009 China will suffer its lowest growth rate in 19 years.

It was unsurprising, therefore, that China’s deputy foreign minister, Wu Hongbo, warned MEPs that Europe and the US could not realistically expect too much from Beijing when it comes to extending a helping hand to battered EU and American economies.

Wu, probably the most senior person the group met, said, “China is the EU’s second-biggest trade partner, while the EU is China’s largest. We look forward to continued good relations between the two of us, but China alone cannot save the world, no more than the US can. We must respond to this crisis together.”

He rightly points out that while China may be the world’s biggest economy, it is also still very much a developing country, struggling to meet the needs of a population in excess of 1.3 billion, four times the size of the US.

The multinational group of MEPs, who came from each of parliament’s main political groups, were joined by a four-strong team from parliament’s secretariat, five political group advisors and six interpreters (not to mention at least three spouses).

The group was led by Belgian ALDE MEP Dirk Sterckx, whose skills as a former television presenter came in useful during some of the more heated exchanges.

Accompanying the group as a guest of the Chinese authorities, I went where few journalists venture: the home of the National People’s Congress (NPC), effectively China’s parliament, overlooking Tiananmen Square, scene of the infamous 1989 protests.

Venturing into the inner sanctum of China’s parliament - the world’s biggest, where its almost 3000 deputies convene just once a year - was like stepping back in time, with monolithic reminders of the country’s communist past everywhere.

It was here the MEPs found themselves facing their stiffest criticism of the week on human rights; ironically, the subject at least some members of the group had intended to raise against China.

Two issues have particularly incensed the Chinese - parliament’s invitation to the Dalai Lama to address the plenary (4 December) and the choice of Chinese dissident Hu Jia for the Sakharov prize, due to be presented in Strasbourg next week. Zha Peixin, the foreign affairs committee vice chair, who also chairs a body that aims to forge relations between parliament and the NPC, laid into the MEPs, saying that both matters had “offended” China’s 1.3 billion-strong population, and issuing dark threats of possible dire consequences.

The outspoken MP was also critical of the EU’s arms embargo on China, calling for it to be lifted. Comparing his country to a “thick book”, Wu Hongbo also chastised the delegation, warning the EU “not to treat China like a candidate country”.

For their part, the MEPs, who at times struggled to maintain diplomatic niceties, handed over a file of about 15 cases of alleged human rights abuses, with Austrian independent MEP Hans-Peter Martin personally raising the well-publicised case of Wo Weihan, a Chinese national who spent four years facing the death sentence for allegedly spying for Taiwan, China’s diplomatic and political rival.

In the opulent surroundings of the five-star Beijing Raffles Hotel, the MEPs’ base in the city (and also of the international Olympic committee during the games), I spoke with Weihan’s tearful daughter, Ran Chen, who had travelled from her California home to make a last-ditch plea for clemency. It failed, and less than 48 hours later, her father was executed by firing squad.

The rows over the Dalai Lama and Sakharov prize - and even news that a parliamentary delegation was among those caught up in the chaos of the Mumbai terrorist attack - threatened to overshadow the whole visit, with China’s controversial decision to cancel last week’s EU-China summit adding to the furore.

And by the end of the week, MEPs were outnumbered by others in the group. Even so, most of those who remained generally agreed that the 27th inter-parliamentary meeting had been a resounding success. UK Socialist MEP Stephen Hughes, who questioned the Chinese on their health and safety record, said, “I think it was very useful.

“I now have a better understanding of the character and motivation of the Chinese delegation and hope they now have a greater understanding of our point of view. I detected a new sense of confidence on the part of the Chinese, stemming from hosting a successful Olympics, their handling of this year’s earthquake and the fact that China seems destined to come out of current financial crisis relatively unscathed. This new sense of confidence can only be a good thing for the rest of the world.”

His German counterpart, Evelyne Gebhardt, agrees. “It was very useful, if sometimes difficult, because it wasn’t easy to speak about human rights issues, which I regard as a great necessity. However, I hope we can continue such work because it’s only by talking to China that we can hope to see progress in such things.”

Dutch centre-right MEP Corien Wortmann-Kool, who is drafting a parliamentary report on EU-China trade relations, said, “The trip was absolutely worthwhile because dialogue is very important to improving relations and the weak points in Chinese politics. This may mean occasionally saying things the Chinese do not want to hear.

"But it is good to see how China is developing so that this can be taken into account in our policymaking towards Beijing. The huge potential for the European market in China is understated by Europeans and should get a higher priority in EU policymaking.”

Even Martin, who is dismissive of many of parliament’s overseas delegations, branding most of them a “complete waste of money”, accepted that it had been worth the 20-hour round trip. What with a devastating earthquake, an uprising in Tibet, the Olympics and a baby milk scandal, the past year has been one of the most turbulent even in China’s long and chequered history.

But, for this writer, if there was one message to emerge from a visit to this most fascinating of countries it is this: the rest of the world needs to know that it is now dealing with a newly self-confident China - one unafraid of flaunting its growing economic maturity - and woe betide anyone who dares to tweak the tail of this Asian tiger.

This is, perhaps, best summed up in a 29 November editorial in China Daily, the country’s English-language newspaper, which is widely read by China’s international community. It brands the meeting between French president Nicolas Sarkozy and the Dalai Lama as “reckless” and lambasts increased “EU protectionism”: “Some western media have been quick to point the finger at China for burning bridges, citing that Europe is China’s largest export market and delaying the (EU-China) summit could aggravate protectionism.

"China is still willing to promote relations with France and the EU. But China’s increasing interdependence with the world economy by no means makes the case for it to tolerate foreign interference in issues concerning its sovereignty and territorial integrity.”