Deng's French connection is recalled amid Chirac praises

DENG Xiaoping was a worker in the Paris Renault automobile factory in the 1920s (and President Jacques Chirac's letters of condolence to Mr Deng's widow, Mrs Zhuo Lin, and to the Chinese President, Mr Jiang Zemin, recalled this fact). Western Europe was then a magnet for young leftwingers from Asia Deng met his future ally Chou En lai on the assembly line.

Mr Chirac, however, yesterday did not mention that the Chinese guest workers established close contacts with the French Communist Party, were hounded by French police and, by the mid1920s, were forced to leave the country.

A half century passed before Deng returned to France this time as a high ranking official. Deng's "exceptional destiny" led him to the highest responsibilities in China, President Chirac noted in his letter to Mrs ZhuoLin. "In less than a generation he committed your country to the path of rapid modernisation and an unprecedented opening to the world. In the course of this century, few men will have engaged so vast a human community in such deep and fundamental changes."

With the effusiveness that is customary on such occasions Mr Chirac praised Deng's qualities as a strategist. "He imposed himself through his pragmatism and his vision of the future, which enabled him to commit your country irreversibly to openness and reforms," he wrote to President Jiang Zemin. "Deng Xiaoping will go down in history as the principal artisan of the transformations that China has undergone in the past 20 years."

The French president was, scheduled to make a state visit to China in May. Mr Yves Doutriaux, a spokesman at the French Foreign Ministry, said that as far as France was concerned the visit would go ahead.

French television commentary last night said that the aftermath of Deng's death would be a time of uncertainty for China. "China is on the verge of a very, very tough time," Edward Behr, a Paris based writer on Chinese affairs told The Irish Times.

Mr Behr, who has just returned from China, said there were many Chinese centres of power - in the army, in Shanghai, among the new capitalists and entrepreneurs - and that these were potentially dangerous for President Jiang Zemin, who has not won the army's loyalty. "This is why the Communist Party is very tough on dissidents," Mr Behr said. "If you are really scared, you see everything as threatening."

At the French Foreign Ministry, Mr Doutriaux commented that although Franco Chinese relations were excellent at present, they "went through a difficult period" after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989. They worsened when France sold Mirage 2000 fighter bombers to Taiwan in the early 1990s but, by January 1994, French and Chinese diplomats concluded an agreement that France would sell no more weapons to Taiwan, and relations went back to normal.

When President Chirac was elected in May 1995, he made relations with Asia a priority, and France claims credit for initiating the Asian European Meeting known as Asem. Mr Chirac met the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, at the first Asem meeting in Bangkok in February 1996. A few months later, Mr Li visited Paris as Mr Chirac's guest. France sees China as a particularly lucrative market. The European consortium Airbus recently sold some 30 aircraft to China, and Airbus has concluded an agreement to build 100 seater planes with a Chinese partner. Furthermore, "France seeks a genuine political partnership with, China," Mr Doutriaux said.

"There are many reasons for this: China is on the Security Council; it is a nuclear power, and with 1.2 billion people it is the most populous country in the world." It was France, under the leadership of Gen Charles de Gaulle, that insisted on a Security Council seat for China - to the great annoyance of the US - back in 1965.

Mr Doutriaux admitted that China and France did not have "exactly the same concept of human rights". When French officials meet their Chinese counterparts, they always ask for the reduction of dissidents sentences or their liberation. "But out of concern for efficiency, this is not publicised," Mr Doutriaux said.

French commentators paid homage to Deng for bringing an element of sanity back to China after the madness of the Cultural Revolution. Yet there were sour notes amid the praise of Deng's "realism" and "vision". "He was a tough little policeman who faithfully implemented all of Mao's early policies," Mr Behr said.

"Deng cracked down on intellectuals long before the cultural revolution in the `Let One Hundred Flowers Bloom' movement. It was Mao's way of unmasking people who criticised the regime.

"Despite his diminutive size, Deng was one of the most brutal Chinese leaders. When Margaret Thatcher met him in 1982, she remarked how cruel he was," Mr Behr said. "Anyone who made his mark this century in China had to be ruthless. His legacy is not a happy one. He worked overtime to liberalise the economy because he realised that was the only possible course. He told the Chinese to get rich in order to make them forget about wanting democracy."