Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives in London on Tuesday at the start of a visit to the UK, Germany and Spain, as part of an initiative by China to try to establish itself as a diplomatic as well as an economic player on the world stage.
It gets oil from Iran and Sudan. That gives it an incentive to avoid upsetting those countries. Yet, as a veto-holding member of the United nations Security Council, its support over Iran’s nuclear programme and Sudan’s repression in Darfur are vital for concerted international action.
So far, China has been on board, but Western countries will have to work hard to keep it so.
It is also needed to keep the dialogue with North Korea going and to establish whether Pyongyang, as it has stated, is seriously interested in giving up its nuclear ambitions.
China is a growing consumer of oil and a growing polluter, so the need to bring it into world negotiations on climate control is also vital.
There are some signs that China is aware of this need. According to British officials, it is coming under pressure from its own citizens to cut back on pollution. It is interested in cleaner technology to help it do so, including work on a near-zero emission coal-fired power station being developed in the US.
Human rights
The greater power of China has perhaps led to a diminution though not to the elimination of human rights demands made on it by the West.
British officials preparing for Mr Hu’s visit said that the UK “took every opportunity” to continue the dialogue, but admitted that “progress can often be seen as frustratingly slow”.
This includes the issue of Tibet. Mr Hu’s visit to the UK will be marked by Tibet activists. There is not expected to be any repetition of the incident in 1999 when demonstrators were rounded up – and later apologised to – by police.
“A lot has changed,” said a British official. “They have brought millions out of poverty, but you are looking for systemic change in human rights.”
One reminder of China’s limited freedoms – the BBC News website is one of many blocked. These words will not be read in China.
Nervousness about China’s future
There is still a certain nervousness that accompanies discussion of China’s future role.
Nobody knows how its mixed system of capitalism run by a communist part will develop or even continue.
“The ‘rise’ of China has suddenly become the all-absorbing topic for those professionally concerned with the future of the planet,” said Professor Lord Robert Skidelsky in the latest New York Review of Books.
“Focus on China is overdue,” he added, concluding that the mixed government formula had “worked brilliantly” but wondering whether this “duet of Party dictatorship and economic freedom can continue.”
Paul.Reynolds-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
