Li Peng seeking limelight from European trip
Li Peng seeking limelight from European trip
By Philippe Massonnet
BEIJING (AFP): Prime Minister Li Peng will be looking to reinforce China's economic miracle and win back control of the country's foreign policy when he goes to Europe this week.
Li starts the two-week tour when he heads for Austria on Tuesday. From there he will go on to Germany for a week and then on to China's former main European ally, Rumania.
Because of his serious heart problems, this will only be the 65-year-old prime minister's second trip abroad in two and a half years.
President Jiang Zemin has instead taken the lead in foreign affairs. In the past year, Jiang has been building up air miles on foreign travel.
The president, a rival to Li in any battle for power in the post-Deng Xiaoping era, has earned political prestige from appearances with world leaders, such as his meeting with President Bill Clinton at last year's Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
"Li Peng is determined to retake control of foreign policy that he lost in 1993 and match the good image Jiang Zemin has in the West," said one European diplomat in Beijing.
Li will be concentrating diplomatic efforts on Germany, China's main trading partner in Europe, where he will arrive on Sunday.
Zhao Ziyang, the man replaced as premier, was the last head of government to visit Germany, back in 1985.
Relations between the two countries are good, even though Beijing protested the visit last month to Germany by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama. It was also unhappy at German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel's meeting with Chinese dissident Wang Juntao.
According to German figures, two-way trade is growing. Chinese exports grew 18.25 percent and German exports 67 percent over the previous year.
German firms are very active in China and Chancellor Helmut Kohl harvested an impressive array of new contracts on a visit to Beijing last November.
Talks will concentrate on economic issues, according to German sources in Beijing. To help him, Li will be accompanied by 150 trade experts and senior Chinese business leaders.
Several contracts are to be signed, some first discussed when Kohl was in Beijing.
The first stage of the tour in Austria will also concentrate on trade. But in Rumania, where Li will be from July 9 to July 12, he will renew an old friendship. When Nicolae Ceausescu was president of Rumania he made his country China's number one ally in communist eastern Europe.
Li would have liked to visit France on the tour, following the normalization of ties between the two countries when Edouard Balladur, the French premier, was in Beijing in April, analysts said.
But he was not invited. President Jiang Zemin, however, was asked by President Francois Mitterrand and should go to France in September. "Li Peng considers that to be an affront," a Chinese diplomat said. "Each time the problem is discussed it makes him angry."
Britain is also not on the list. But a visit there is unlikely while the dispute continues on how Hong Kong should be run after the return to Chinese rule in 1997.