Published by: World Tibet Network News, Monday, July 8, 1996

TIME International

July 8, 1996

GERMAN CRITICISM OF CHINA'S HUMAN-RIGHTS POLICIES BRINGS A DIPLOMATIC SNUB AND CONCERN OVER TRADE

JAMES O. JACKSON

Those who wish to partake of the hoped-for bonanza in trade with China often find they must learn a few distasteful lessons about the Beijing leadership's sensitivity. The French learned it in 1992 when they sold 60 Mirage jet fighters to Taiwan. China put a freeze on French orders that lasted a full year and was lifted only when French officials promised not to do it again. The U.S. lesson came in May this year when, after a spate of criticism of the Chinese human-rights record, a $1.9 billion order for 33 passenger jets went to Airbus Industrie instead of Boeing or McDonnell Douglas.

Last week Germany's turn came. The Bundestag passed a high-minded resolution finding fault with China's record in human rights. It mentioned poor conditions in Chinese orphanages as reported by Human Rights Watch/Asia, and it condemned "China's continued policy of repression in Tibet." Both are sore subjects for the Chinese leadership--especially Tibet, forcibly incorporated into China in 1959. The Chinese response was reflexively swift--abrupt cancellation of a long-planned July visit by German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel. Radio Beijing emphasized the snub by announcing the cancellation well before word was passed through official diplomatic channels. The responsibility, said Beijing, lay "exclusively with the German side."

In response, the German government called off China visits by three other government ministers scheduled for later this summer. Rita Sussmuth, the Bundestag president, called the Chinese retaliation "overreaction," and others declared that the prospect of profit would not affect Germany's human-rights policies. "What's important is to speak up for freedom in the world, even if at the moment it might be diplomatically awkward," said Oskar Lafontaine, chairman of the opposition Social Democrats who supported the resolution along with Chancellor Helmut Kohl's ruling coalition. Only a handful of deputies of the ex-communist Party of Democratic Socialism and one CDU deputy abstained.

German officials were surprised by the strength of the Chinese reaction, and they had cause to worry about the economic consequences. German sales to China have doubled in three years, to $7 billion in 1995, and some of Germany's biggest manufacturers are heavily committed to future growth there. Ludwigshafen-based BASF is building a $4 billion chemical complex in Nanking, Jiangsu province, and most of the $3.3 billion in Asian investment by Siemens AG is tied up in China's telecommunications infrastructure. It is those big-ticket items that face disruption if the dispute continues. "Such political developments can have an impact, especially with the signing of major contracts," warns Otto Wolff von Amerongen, chairman of the German East-West Trade Committee. "There, the Chinese government makes the decisions. Other nations might be favored because they kept their mouths shut."

Industry leaders hope the Bundestag will cool its rhetoric. "I am not greatly concerned so long as this does not drag out too long," says Heinrich Weiss, chairman of the China Working Group of German Business. "This is purely a diplomatic eclat." And, in fact, both sides appeared to be dampening the eclat. The Germans still plan a November state visit by President Roman Herzog, and late in the week Chinese President Jiang Zemin sent a telegram to Herzog expressing pleasure at the prospect of the trip. Business potentially as usual, in other words. Forgetting about Tibet, of course.

--By James O. Jackson. Reported by Bruce van Voorst/Bonn