I wonder what French President Sarkozy is now thinking about repairing his ties with China. His envoy Raffarin, former French Prime Minister, who said he is a good friend of Wen Jiabao and is going to set up a blog with Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV’s website to answer questions from Chinese netizens, is in China trying to mend the ties.
But, the Chinese leadership reportedly only gives a lukewarm response and is still waiting to see what the capricious Sarkozy will do to fix the ties, not what he or his rep says.
I must say Sarkozy is very stupid for his position as President. He doesn’t know how to deal with China, which has regarded his country as a “friend” since France, as the first Western country, established diplomatic ties with the P.R. China. Neither does he seem to understand what he is doing when he makes the Chinese government lose its face and feel betrayed, repeatedly.
But, there are more of China’s “friends” who behave the same way. Why are France and Sarkozy singled out?
They are singled out to warn Western governments what will happen to them and their countries if they continue to encroach upon the Chinese interests, e.g. Tibet and Taiwan, the Chinese government considers as “core”.
First, France is a country considered by the Chinese government as a long-time friend in the West. The Chinese government must be particularly angry about what he says and does. Second, France is easy prey, compared to the United States.
So, it follows that there is currently no better country than France “as a rooster to be killed to terrorize the monkeys” (杀鸡骇猴).
By the way, my little knowledge about France is, first of all, about its people working only in the first half of the year and going on strike in the second, but they get paid for the whole year. The first part of this idea might be a factoid. And the second part is what my logics leads me to believe: If they are not on paid strikes every time they take to the streets in that country, what would they use to pay for everything? Correct me if I’m wrong.
Dear readers, what’s now your one-sentence impression of France?
Nice to see that your English blog is going on. I believe I can say what president Sarkozy is thinking. According to Le Figaro, Mr Raffarin isn’t Sarkozy’s representative, but was travelling on his own political account, and on that of the parliamentarians who joined his delegation. I’m adding a link to a post of my own on this topic (hope this won’t look like promotion of my own blog, but it might contain some interesting takes from the French press). We can count Mr Raffarin into the same school as Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schroeder (former German chancellor) when it comes to European-Chinese relations. Merkel and Sarkozy come from a different school, although Raffarin and Sarkozy belong to the same political party and agree on most domestic issues. But no matter from which political school they are, all of them listen to their advisors and diplomats before making decisions.
Btw, I voted for Schroeder every time he was a candidate for chancellorship, but mostly for domestic reasons, not for his foreign policy. He was a courageous reformer, and if Germany is reasonably well-prepared for the current economic crisis now, it is thanks to him, not thanks to Merkel.
People on strike both here in Germany and in France are usually paid by their unions when on strike, provided that they are members of a union. But what the unions pay them per day on strike is usually much less than what people would earn at work, so both employees and unions try to make sure that strikes don’t last for too long. Neither the bosses nor the employees will get everything they want. After all, employees on strike want better wages, but they don’t want to destroy their own jobs.
JR, thanks for your information.
I double-checked reports about Rafarin in the Chinese media. He was a special envoy of Sarkozy on an earlier China trip, but currently he is in Beijing not in that capacity. I might have come across a misleading news photo (i’m now not sure it exists). This is the TV site’s link: http://news.ifeng.com/world/special/jeanpierreraffarin/. This page’s titles identifies him as “France’s special envoy”.
About Schroeder, Chinese media said that he might be the poorest European government leader because he got divorced several times and each time his divorced wife took away half of his money. Is this true?
I think it was true before he joined Gazprom… But during his time as chancellor, he probably earned less than many backbenchers in parliament. Same with then foreign minister Fischer, who had several divorces, too.
But I don’t think it was half of the money each time. When divorcing, the amounts you have to pay depend on how many children you have with your wife, if she has a good income of her own (or not), and so on.
That’s interesting.
Though I’m not exactly clear about how Chinese Marriage Law or other laws work, it seems that when getting divorced in China, all the money earned by the husband and wife during the marriage is shared half and half. And I have no idea how kids will be factored in. Of course, the judges will consider everything.
Either way, one of them usually gains, one of them loses in such a case – unless they are about equally matched, in terms of income.
Equality is a myth then.