Black and White Cat

The first three pages of this week’s Southern Weekly were devoted to the Carrefour boycott and protests, including protesting primary school students in Hefei. Three of the items are interviews - one or them with the French ambassador to China, headlined “We respect China. We hope China will also respect France.” That’s Ambassador Ladsous in the picture, doing his bit to restore Sino-French relations by kissing Jin Jing’s hand in Shanghai last week. (CORRECTION: That is NOT Ambassador Ladsous - it’s Christian Poncelet, president of the French Senate.)

ESWN has translated the interview with CCTV’s Bai Yansong, discussing his opposition to the boycott, and the nature of patriotism, protests and democracy. Here’s the other one of the three - with Wu Jianmin, former ambassador to France and current president of the Foreign Affairs University:

Southern Weekly: Do you approve of a boycott of Carrefour?

Wu Jianmin: No, I don’t. Some self-styled “patriotic” actions have damaged the interests of these staff, damaged the interests of China and damaged China’s image. If there are many excessive actions people don’t know what you might do next. They can’t be sure about you and their misgivings and anxiety about you will increase. Patriotism is a good thing, but it must be guided by reason. Patriotism must be in line with core national interests. Actions that harm the reform and opening up cannot be called patriotic.

Southern Weekly: If you met a crowd of people boycotting Carrefour, what advice would you give to them?

Wu Jianmin: It’s usually very difficult to reason with a protesting crowd. That’s my experience. When a crowd is very angry, no one will listen to reason. What’s needed now is for publications like yours to speak to them with a rational voice.

Southern Weekly: Some overseas Chinese and overseas students have been demonstrating. Are you against that too?

Wu Jianmin: The overseas Chinese demonstrations have been quite orderly. The actions they have taken have been within the limits permitted by local laws and I haven’t seen any negative effects arising from these actions.

Southern Weekly: Do you think boycotts are effective?

Wu Jianmin: You don’t hear about this much in a globalized world. Boycotts are an outdated reaction. Boycotting a country’s products - before the Second World War, China boycotted Japanese goods. There wasn’t globalization then and Japanese goods were made in Japan. Obviously, at that time, if you didn’t buy Japanese goods it would be a blow to Japanese businessmen.

Southern Weekly: There are also French citizens proposing a boycott of Chinese products.

Wu Jianmin: Very few people are doing that. It just can’t be done. Chinese products are absolutely everywhere in French supermarkets. And there are so many imported Chinese products because the quality is good and the price is low, so the supermarkets can earn a lot of money.

Southern Weekly: According to your understanding, what’s the story behind a particular company and businessman’s political contributions?

Wu Jianmin: French law allows companies to donate funds to political and religious organizations. Bernard Arnault, the major shareholder in LVMH, is a friend of mine. He’s already denied the rumors. Arnault is a financial wizard. He doesn’t get involved in politics, and that includes the issue of Tibet. Arnault has great admiration for China’s development. He thinks the Chinese market has enormous potential for development. I don’t believe a financial wizard like this would lose everything for the sake of something small.

As far as other business groups are concerned, this often stems from humanitarian sympathy for certain organizations or individuals, or they hope to improve the human rights situation in a particular region. It can even be a matter of giving money because of friendship and connections. Connections matter in France too. As for specific incidents, sometimes they understand what’s going on, sometimes they don’t.

Southern Weekly: A lot of people in China have also expressed dissatisfaction about the mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoe. Do you know this person well?

Wu Jianmin: I also have a strong dislike [for some of the things he has said and done concerning Tibet]. At Spring Festival in 2002, he held an official reception for 3,000 people on behalf of the Paris government. He also suggested that we hold a Chinese parade in the Champs Elysees and I expressed my support. The parade was accomplished in 2004.

The Socialist Party cares a lot about human rights. But a lot of people don’t really understand the Tibet issue and there’s a lot of prejudice. In my opinion, he is that kind of person.

Southern Weekly: Can you talk a bit about your impression of the French media?

Wu Jianmin: The French media boast about freedom of reporting. A lot of people are prejudiced against China. We have to acknowledge that, but there’s also room for improvement in our way of communicating. For instance, our formalized language and political terminology is very hard to translate. Our vocabularies are very different. Sometimes when we’re explaining our position we’re too rigid in the way we say it. Foreigners often start with the specific and go on to the abstract, but we start from the abstract and use very few specifics.

Southern Weekly: There are misunderstandings about China in the West. How can mutual understanding be improved?

Wu Jianmin: We need to promote travel and personal contact between the two sides. I was an ambassador in Europe for nine years, and one thing I discovered was that there is a very big difference between people who have come to China and people who haven’t. There are many issues that it’s very easy to discuss with people who have been to China. But people who haven’t often have quite a lot of prejudices.

Chinese people also need to understand France. Chairman Mao said that all countries, whether big or small, have merits and faults. As a nation, the Chinese are very tolerant. We need to study all countries’ merits, including France.

Southern Weekly: A lot of things that have happened recently are connected in some way or other to the Olympics. Do you have any worries about the Olympics?

Wu Jianmin: With the Olympics approaching, all kinds of forces hostile to China are making meticulous plans and they want to create disturbances. We need to be very clear in our minds that these people are absolutely not a majority in the world. The very small minority who are causing a uproar do not represent the whole world.

Every Olympic Games has some trouble, but that hasn’t affected the success of the Olympics. What should we do if we’re confronted with trouble? Two things — one, we must handle things according to the rules of the International Olympic Committee. Two, we must handle things according to Chinese law.

Chinese people should have confidence that the overwhelming majority of people in the world hope the Beijing Olympics are a success. Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics is the will of the people and the trend of the times.