Fresh opportunity to China-France ties

BEIJING - Francois Hollande was sworn in as France's new president on Tuesday, an inauguration that many see as an opportunity to improve the European heavyweight's relations with China.

Hollande takes power at a time when the international situation is undergoing profound changes. France is facing the challenges of how to cope with globalization, overcome the impact of the world financial crisis and the European debt problem, and continue to play a large role on the international stage.

Under such circumstances, the significance of France's relationship  with China, the world's second largest economy, is quite evident.

Two days after defeating former President Nicolas Sarkozy, Hollande met with Kong Quan, the Chinese ambassador to France, and said he attaches great importance to China's role in international politics and economics. The president also said he hopes that the friendly ties between the two countries will make new progress.

China-France ties have witnessed twists and turns since the two countries established diplomatic ties in 1964.

In 1997, then Chinese President Jiang Zemin and his French counterpart Jacques Chirac signed in Beijing a joint declaration on the establishment of a comprehensive partnership.

In 2004, Chinese President Hu Jintao and Chirac agreed to upgrade the  countries' bilateral ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership.

And in 2010, Hu and Sarkozy pledged to strengthen the comprehensive strategic partnership between the two countries based on mutual trust and mutual benefit.

The facts above fully demonstrate the recognition by the two countries' leaders of the strategic value of the China-France relationship and their efforts to consistently improve it.

There were also downturns in bilateral ties following France's sales of weapons to Taiwan in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Bilateral ties hit a low point in December 2008 following Sarkozy's meeting with the Dalai Lama and pro-Tibetan protesters' disruption of the Beijing Olympic torch relay through Paris earlier that year.

The reason behind the twists and turns lies in the fact that Paris did not fully recognize the strategic value of the bilateral ties. Only after France had understood its misplay and taken measures to correct itself, did bilateral ties go back on track.

Differences exist between China and France due to different political systems, ideologies and values. However, these differences did not stop the two countries from establishing diplomatic ties during the Cold War era. The differences also did not block the steady development of their relationship in the past half century.

Differences are indeed unavoidable, but dialogue and consultation are the right way to resolve them. It is also common that there are conflicts and frictions in the economic and trade relations of the two big economies. How to address the frictions is indeed a question of how to face the impact of globalization.

For France, the way out of the globalization conundrum is to bring its advantage in innovation into full play and to improve its competitiveness instead of passively coping with the situation through protectionism.

China and France are important trade partners of each other, with their economies intertwined and complementing each other. It conforms to the interests of both countries to achieve a win-win situation.

It is highly expected that France's new leadership will act in concert with Beijing to further explore their cooperation potential and push bilateral relations even further forward.