PARIS, May 5 (AFP) - Europe, with France at its head, must open "regular dialogue" with China or risk being shouldered aside by US and Russian interests, French Foreign Minister Herve de Charette said here Monday.

"It isn't normal that dialogue with China should be the sole prerogative of the Russians or the Americans.

"That's why the Europeans, with France in the lead, must undertake a regular, dense and constructive dialogue with China," he said.

Economically, De Charette pointed out, France was lagging behind.

"With 1.7 percent of the market, we are only ranking 13th in imports to China," he said.

The minister's comments, coming during the opening of a Paris cultural exhibition entitled "China, today and tomorrow", was apparently laying the groundwork for French President Jacques Chirac's upcoming trip to China May 15-18.

They also follow a reversal in France's attitude towards China's widely-condemned rights record.

Last month, France, followed by Germany, Greece, Italy and Spain, backed out of its traditional support for a UN motion censuring China's approach to human rights. The United States and 13 other western countries voted for the motion, but were defeated.

Critics said Paris was putting commercial interests ahead of humanitarian goals in the country.

But De Charette described it simply as a "change of method in the promotion of human rights in China."

"Our attitude doesn't consist of stopping calls for human rights which are a French cause anyway but of recommending a change of method," De Charette said.

Since beating the UN censure motion, China has agreed to sign a UN pact on civil and political rights by the end of the year.

Monday, in the French political magazine Politique internationale, Chinese President Jiang Zemin said the world's economy was inextricably linked with that of China's.

"If China topples into instability, its economy would enter into crisis, plunging the Chinese people into misery the entire world would be affected," he said.

Worrying about China's economic success would be "an error, nonsensical" Jiang said, stressing the country was still in the developing world.

"It therefore still has much to do to improve the quality of life of its population. It would only be in the pursuit of its reforms, opening up to the exterior and its modernisation.

"The political stability, the prosperity of a country which represents a fifth of the world's population is, in itself, a significant contribution to peace and global growth," he said.

He made no mention, however, of the human rights issue.

The closest he came was when he commented on the troubled region of Tibet, which China seized in 1951.

Jiang said "The Tibetans live happily and see their living conditions continually improve" without the Dalia Lama who, he said, wants "a feudal regime of servitude, a backward theocracy."

In particular, Jiang welcomed the warming French-Chinese relations, helped along by publication of a joint statement in 1994 in which France undertook to cease selling arms to Taiwan.

Taiwan, which China regards as a renegade province, officially announced the arrival Monday of the first five of 60 French Mirage jet fighters ordered in a 3.8 billion-dollar contract in 1992.