French President Nicolas Sarkozy must hope that his state visit last week to Beijing and Shanghai, his second since becoming president, yields better results than his first one. Shortly after that trip, in November 2007, Sino-French political relations quickly soured over Tibet and other disputes.
On this occasion, though, his meetings appear to have gone well (indeed, Sarkozy received more Chinese leadership attention than the high-level European Union delegation that also visited China last week) and there appears to have been an upturn in bilateral relations since the low of two years ago, when the French president aroused Chinese anger by attacking Beijing’s March 2008 security crackdown in the Tibet Autonomous Region. The following month, pro-Tibet demonstrators and other human rights activists concerned about China’s policies in Darfur and elsewhere disrupted the Olympic torch relay as it passed through Paris.
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