France and China have signed a fresh batch of trade deals during a state visit by President Hu Jintao that has already seen Paris win export contracts worth $20 billion.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has brushed aside worries about China’s human rights record to throw on a warm and lavish welcome for Mr Hu, wooing investment and Chinese support for his agenda as the incoming president of the G20.
France and China signed $20 billion in industrial contracts on Thursday at the start of Mr Hu’s three-day visit.
Fifteen contracts were signed on “commercial and economic cooperation”.
The deals were signed at business association Medef on Paris’s chic Left Bank in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, at a ceremony attended by Chinese Minister of Commerce Cheng Deming and French Trade Secretary Anne-Marie Idrac.
After striking a deal to supply 102 airliners to Chinese firms worth $14 billion, the boss of Airbus parent company EADS, Louis Gallois, said China’s human rights “problem” could not be resolved by businesses.
“I don’t think that we should resolve the problems that you mention, notably human rights, through business,” Mr Gallois said when asked by BFM radio about the lack of any public comment by Mr Sarkozy on human rights in China.
“I don’t see what commercial instrument one can use to resolve this kind of problem. I think that China is developing, evolving, as it opens up,” he said.
Amidst the deals, Mr Hu has thrown China’s weight behind Mr Sarkozy’s goal of using France’s upcoming presidency of the G20 group of the world’s largest economies to reform the global financial system.
China’s Deputy Foreign Minister Fu Ying revealed the scale of the deals to reporters after talks between the presidents and a signing ceremony at the Elysee Palace, where a state banquet was held on Thursday.
“The visit is going very well. We have had some great successes,” Mr Fu told reporters.
“The Chinese delegation is totally satisfied and has high hopes for future discussions.” France will after next week’s summit in South Korea take on the year-long rotating G20 presidency, during which Mr Sarkozy wants to push major international reforms, and the two leaders have shown a united front on the issue.
French nuclear giant Areva has also signed a contract to supply $3.5 billion worth of uranium to Chinese power firm CNGPC.
France and China have had tense diplomatic ties in recent years, notably over French meetings with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, but they maintain important economic ties and relations have warmed since 2009.
Activists and the Socialist opposition complain France has kept human rights off the menu for the visit.
No joint news conference has been scheduled, an exceptional departure from state visit procedures that has been criticised by campaigners who want Mr Hu to be pressed on the issue of human rights.
Campaigners criticised Mr Sarkozy for not speaking out in favour of jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, whose Nobel Peace Prize enraged Beijing when it was announced last month.
Mr Hu was to re-light the flame at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Paris’s Arc de Triomphe before meeting French Prime Minister Francois Fillon and heading to the Riviera city of Nice for a working dinner with Mr Sarkozy.