PARIS — China's cancellation of the annual EU-China summit four days before it was to be held in Lyon is explained by French President Nicolas Sarkozy's decision to meet the Dalai Lama in Poland a few days later. But what looks like a diplomatic spat shows European leaders that they need to face up to some hard truths about their relationship with China.
China's leaders have become much more skillful at sugarcoating their bullets. There will be official talk from China about postponement of the summit rather than cancellation. And the country will be suave and open-minded to its European friends, open to business the very next day.
But China's leaders will not have taken this decision lightly. One has to go back to the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s to find a multilateral precedent. They have only behaved similarly to individual neighbors such as Japan or Singapore, or more recently to Germany for a very short time. They are second to none at judging their international partners' strengths and weaknesses.