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China charms Europe, but Beijing has own agenda
When a nervous horse unseated its cavalry officer at a red-carpet event during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit to Portugal last year, the leader of the world’s second-largest economy broke with protocol and walked over to the bruised guardsman.
Europe’s frail economies are wobbling under the weight of their debts. Their urgent austerity measures are stunting growth and driving unemployment higher, and their citizens are clamoring for improvements. That has changed the complexion of European dealings with booming China.
The public display of compassion was in keeping with China’s European charm offensive in recent years. It has waved its checkbook at a growing number of financially ailing European countries _ although the actual impact on Europe’s debt-stricken countries has been limited so far, and aimed mainly at winning friends and business contracts.
Join the dots, Beijing-watchers say, and China’s strategy becomes clear: It wants to use its economic leverage to make friends who may be more forgiving in disputes over trade and human rights, and ensure doors are open for its goods and corporate investments in the European Union, its main export market.
“I hope you get well soon,” Hu told him through an interpreter.
China charms Europe, but Beijing has own agenda
“China is increasingly trying to diversify its foreign policy relationships … trying to find the right ways to use its new-found influence, to gain from it,” says Nicholas Consonery,sterile syringe filters, an Asia analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington DC.
Crisis-hit European countries are swooning over China’s $3.2 trillion cash pile _ the world’s biggest foreign exchange reserves _ even though many are angry about what they view as unfair Chinese practices.