French/European relations with China....

Living in France, I get the idea that the relationship between them and China is much different (more amicable) than the US-China relationship. Am I correct in this assumption?

For instance, my girlfriend (who’s Taiwanese, as a side note) told me that last year was the Year of China, just as this year is the year of Brazil. I wouldn’t imagine the US (1) designating another country to focus on for a whole year (which I think is a magnificent idea) and (2) choosing China as a country to focus on.

Thanks…have a good one

I think the US-China relationship has been strained by the fact that China remains (in theory) a Communist state. It’s not as important to the White House now, but until the early 1990’s, they were one of the Red Enemy.

There are also dynamics involving the US and the Chinese Communist Party’s enemy, the Guomindang.

I’m sorry, but Speaker for the Dead’s comment is really not true at all. The fact that the PRC is a Communist state is perhaps the most overlooked potential irritant in US-Chinese relations. The US-China relationship is nothing at all like the hostile US-Cuba relationship, in which US policy is overwhelmingly based upon the fact that the leader of Cuba is a Communist dictator.

Relations between the United States and China from the mid-1970s to 1989 were characterized by a warming of relations, compared to where they had been. The Soviet Union and China had increasingly terrible relations since the death of Stalin, but by the late 1960s, they were outright hostile to each other. Generally speaking, the US and China reached an understanding that we both hated the Soviet Union, even though there were considerable irritants in the relationship, such as Taiwan. Again, the US for nearly two decades overlooked the fact that China was Communist simply because they were anti-Soviet.

In 1989, Tiananmen Square happened, and things got downright frosty for a period of years. The US response was generally focused around the severe human rights abuses that had occured (and largely continue to occur), rather than the form of the Chinese government.

Since then, it has been a very complex relationship that is cooperative in some ways (US businesses love to trade, the US government has responded with various trade deals, and diplomatic niceties about our countries being “strategic partners” instead of competitors, cooperation on the North Korean nuclear issue); and hostile in others (criticism of China’s human rights, the chance of war over Taiwan, unfair Chinese trade practices, the perception that China seeks to challenge the US superpower status in coming decades, the US spy plane being forced down in China early in the Bush Administration). There’s also a strain on the US side in that Japan, South Korea, and China are often in competition for more diplomatic attention from the US: that’s why senior US officials almost always visit all three countries when traveling to the Asia-Pacific region.

There’s a microchasm of the relationship that probably illustrates things the best: Americans complain that China is stealing US manufacturing jobs, and Americans like to buy cheap Chinese made goods. Conversely, Chinese have a sort of envy for the power that the US wields, but at the same time, often resent American power as well.

I believe it is a much more complex relationship, and general feel-good statements about China (along the line of “the Year of China”) untempered by some criticism probably would not be very well received by the American people, thus are not really in political vogue.

Thinking further about Speaker for the Dead’s comment, there is a fragment of the American population that does get riled up by the “Red Chinese,” and although they are passionate and vocal, they are voices in the wilderness, and their hardline views really don’t have much bearing on the overall US-China relationship.

I think the strained US-China relationship has more to do with the economic balance of power than ideology at this point. Isn’t China considered to be Quasai-Communist state now. They do have free market zones near the ports in the south (I think) but the rest of the country is Communist. Does this sort of government even have a name? Does any other country do it this way–or is it strictly a Chinese invention?

France and other smaller economies might have a less tense relationship with China because they are not neccesarily economic rivals, but that is total speculation. The European Union as a whole, however, may deal with China in a different way than the individual countries.

As you can see i’m not really laying down any facts here, just some more questions and some speculation.

France has another reason: they been seeking a “counter-balance” to the US for some time, in the EU and elsewhere.

It’s no real secret. Chirac has publicly admitted as much.

Only people in the US would wonder why France has friendly relations with China.

They consider tensions and hostility between states to be the normal state of affairs. This is not the attitude of the vast majority of the world’s peoples or the positions of the overwhelming majority of states in the world.

Look at the annual condemnation at the UN of the US blockade of Cuba. Every state, except the US and Israel, and maybe a few lapdogs who abstain, considers the blockade illegal under international law.

In fact, France and China have good relations with each other and almost every other country on the planet.

Lucky for me, Galen, I’m not in the US, however, I still think you’re exaggerating. I don’t think “countries” have truly friendly relationships. I think all countries, with the exception of maybe Sweden (not becuase I know that for a fact, only because they seem to be the closest thing to Utopia that exists), are selfish and coniving.

Is that because I come from America?

On the other hand, I live with a Taiwanese girl and we have many chinese friends. Unfortunately for me in this department, they could care less about politics and they think all the politics in their coutries are foolish.

So there you have it. I’m just asking for some info.

Your answer seems to imply that China has a wonderful human rights record, economic policy, etc. (I’m NOT implying that the US does, at all). What I wanted to know is why when I watch the news here in France it seems that the french government has NO problem with China. It’s fine if that’s the case because the US’s approach is to denounce and support the governement at the same time, which is a bit hypocritical, I would say.

Have a good one…

Thank you, Ravenman, for that correction. Your answer was clearly much better researched than mine.

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It’s not. Trust me on this.
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