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New approach to old values

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Premier Wen Jiabao, addressing the China-Europe Summit in The Hague on December 9, said: 'Countries with different systems can peacefully co-exist. China and Europe protect a variety of civilisations, promoting dialogue between different types.'

For many in Europe, China is seen as offering on the back of its economic boom a fresh, rational approach to a range of issues, from globalisation to peace.

'China's determination to follow a peaceful road to development is to try to use a peaceful international environment in order to develop itself,' Mr Wen said. 'Moreover, we will use our own development to promote world prosperity. In China's modern history, we have had enough humiliation and deeply know the value of peace.'

In his address, Mr Wen presented values which may differ from Washington's increasingly fundamental and unilateral approach to world affairs. His words were welcome to many Europeans who have also suffered the experience of war. In turn, the European Union indicated that it is prepared to lift a 15-year-old arms embargo against China.

Mr Wen explained that China's interest in the lifting of the embargo is not to immediately buy weapons, but rather to erase the stigma implied by its existence. 'Respect is the precondition for understanding,' Mr Wen said. 'Understanding is the foundation of co-operation.'

Surprisingly little in the way of understanding was expressed in the December 11 edition of The Economist. An editorial, headlined 'Too soft a touch', which said that 'lifting its arms ban on China will do the EU no credit' could have been penned by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. The editorial reran an old photograph of tanks entering Tiananmen Square in 1989. Since then, however, China has had three separate generations of leadership and two complete restructurings of government, while its economy has been transformed.

The 1989 Tiananmen killings have been repeatedly raised as a basis for an embargo of technology sales to China. But the Guantanamo Bay detention centre and the resuscitation of Saddam Hussein's torture chambers by Iraq's new occupiers are abuses affronting these very values, and we have seen images even more horrific than the tanks in 1989. Should China still be punished for what happened 15 years ago?

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