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.