The World

By Geoff Dyer, the FT’s China bureau chief

China can do strange things to your politics. I know foreigners who purr about the efficiency of authoritarian bureaucracy and others who search Confucian texts for new political ideas. In my case, China has converted me to the importance of the European Union.

Sitting in Beijing, it is all too easy to feel that Europe is becoming irrelevant, as the US and a rising China stitch up the global agenda. The Chinese have become quite adept at playing one European government against another. When Beijing cancelled a summit with the EU last year to punish Nicolas Sarkozy for meeting the Dalai Lama, the response from other EU capitals was an awkward silence. The European Council on Foreign Relations claims Beijing treats the EU with “diplomatic contempt”.

So David Miliband’s argument last week that Europe needs a big name to deal with China and the US struck a chord – even if I am not so keen on his image of a EU president “stopping the traffic in Beijing” (we get quite enough of that already, thanks, Mr Miliband). And when I mentioned last week to a Chinese academic that Jean-Claude Juncker of Luxembourg was a serious candidate for the post, his look can only be described as incredulous.

That said, it is probably a good thing that Tony Blair does not now seem likely to get the job. The EU’s standing in Beijing would be helped by having a leader with the heft of Blair. But the job also occasionally requires standing up to Beijing in defense of values that Europe holds strongly or to push back against divide-and-rule tactics. Judging by an op-ed he wrote a couple of weeks ago after a visit to China, Blair is not the man for this role. He gushed about how ‘a new Cultural Revolution is taking place” and warned about the dangers of “disorder”. I found myself thinking, a little cheekily, that Blair has internalized his conversations with Chinese politicians, only to read: “We should understand how the country looks to China’s leaders from the inside.”

As it happens, the UK does have a couple big hitters who know how to strike the right balance.  Chris Patten was a hate-figure in Beijing in his Kong Kong days, when he wanted to expand elections, but he built up good personal ties as an EU commissioner. Lord Mandelson is anything but a China-basher, but with an audience of Communist Party officials in Beijing last month, he managed to talk about human rights in the sort of direct language that foreign politicians rarely use in China and which some Chinese actually appreciate. If Gordon Brown wants a Briton who can boost European leverage in Beijing, he has been backing the wrong man.

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