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By Li Hongmei (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2008-12-12 17:22

In recent days ‘boycott’ seems to have become a hot word amid the Chinese grassroots in their expressions of strong discontent to whatever they intensely felt as a provocation endangering the national interest or a threat to the national dignity as a whole. France, under the presidency of Nicolas Sarkozy, has swirled into the center of the Chinese boycott waves.

It all started from the Paris leg of the Beijing Olympic flame’s global tour, in which the torch relay had been constantly harassed and torch bearers assaulted by ‘Tibetan independence’ supporters with the tacit or open approval from the French government. Then Sarkozy presented the bargaining chip with China declaring on an international occasion that whether he would attend the Beijing Olympic opening ceremony depended on China’s attitudes toward Tibet. His words and deeds totally disregarded the fact that Tibet is within China’s territory and Tibetan issue is China’s internal issue, which enraged the Chinese people both at home and abroad.

Some French media poured oil over flames and sparked a more wide spread indignation among the Chinese by their distorted reporting and fabricated news coverage. What ensued was an online call for boycotting Carrefour, a French supermarket chain, which swiftly gained the nationwide support; and sure enough, in the following two months, Carrefour had been under the pressure of boycott from the Chinese consumers.

But Sarkozy finally showed up at the Olympic ceremony and was forgiven by the Chinese when he was shown grinning in the news footage. After all, the peace-loving Chinese people are always ready to take the olive branch reaching out to them.

The friendly ties between China and France have stood up to the tests of time and facts since the two countries established the diplomatic relationship in 1964. Charles de Gaulle was the first Western president who had wisely looked at China as a visible part on the world stage. But why today Sarkozy always remains blind to the de facto global trends featuring ‘cooperation is superior to confrontation?’ And when the cash-strapped E.U needs China’s active involvement in face of the global economic recession, he again made the unwise decision to meet the Dalai Lama, which the Chinese government strongly offended to and also severely poisoned the efforts from both sides to patch up relations between the two nations since the Beijing Olympics.

‘Whoever understands the times is a great man,’ as an old Chinese saying goes. May President Sarkozy also acknowledge that, and whatever you would say or do, if you really mean to mend the relations with China, must be in good faith. China is rising in both economy and national strength, and the Chinese people are getting mature in viewing the international affairs, and their patriotism will by no means be evolved into orgies of nationalism, as some Westerners worried. What is more important to the Chinese at this juncture, rather than boycott, is further strengthening the nation in economy, culture and science and technology, as they have realized that, in the diplomatic tug of war, there are no ever-lasting alliances, but there are always eternal interests, and especially nowadays the international community tends to be more interdependent than ever.