ANALYSIS: Dissidents highlight limits of Sino-German friendship

By Kristina Dunz and Andreas Landwehr Feb 4, 2012, 2:06 GMT

Beijing - Chinese obstruction of Angela Merkel's schedule threw a pall over the second day of the chancellor's visit to China.

Although Merkel studiously avoided giving signs of discomfort about being prevented from meeting critically-minded Chinese, the thoughts of most fellow-Germans would have instantly flashed back to the bullying in Germany's onetime communist dictatorship.

Merkel grew up under that dictatorship, which collapsed in 1989, and loathed its state security service, the Stasi.

China's leaders gave Merkel plenty of their time. Her Beijing schedule Thursday and Friday mostly had her in the Great Hall of the People. President Hu Jintao welcomed her in the monumental building on Tiananmen Square. So did Prime Minister Wen Jiabao earlier.

The Chinese praised her as 'an old friend of China' and called her their most important partner in Europe. But they left no doubt about who was setting the rules of the game and when Merkel would be offside.

Two meetings the Germans planned failed to eventuate: a meeting in Beijing with China's most prominent human-rights lawyer, Mo Shaoping, and a visit set for Saturday to the offices in Guangzhou, southern China, of Nanfangzhoumo, a newspaper that offers a range of independent views.

On the record, Merkel was silent about the obstruction that led to the two cancellations. She avoided any confrontation with her hosts.

The chancellor has improved her relationship with the Chinese over the course of the years and needs them to help underpin the euro.

But Germans know that, given her life story, she would have been deeply offended, especially since Mo Shaoping had been invited to meet her at the German embassy by ambassador Michael Schaefer.

Merkel, 57, spent her childhood, student years and early career as a scientist in the East German surveillance state. Though she was not a dissident, she often speaks of the oppressiveness and fear of those times.

Mo Shaoping told dpa state security officers went to his office Thursday afternoon and held him there until the evening.

'I told them, 'You don't have any legal right to do this,'' Mo told dpa. 'They said it was for 'stability.''

When he challenged their grounds for preventing him from meeting Merkel, Mo said the police told him: 'The leaders said you can't go.'

Mo Shaoping has had a string of dissidents as clients, among them imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo.

Chinese insiders said the provincial government in Guangzhou also applied pressure to the newspaper to call off the chancellor's scheduled visit to its office.

Nanfangzhoumo had published an interview with Merkel on Thursday in which she spoke mainly about economic topics and the eurozone.

'The newspaper called off the visit,' a source in Merkel's delegation said. 'You can draw your own conclusions.' Berlin briefing papers on the trip had described the newspaper as 'critical' and 'reflective.'

Merkel has praised human rights as inalienable at practically every stop of her three-day visit to China, saying that freedom of expression is vital and China can only keep its prosperity long term through a social compact.

Implicitly, she has also counselled the Chinese to be more tolerant of criticism in the media.

China knows that Merkel cannot be shut up.

She once invited the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, to her office in Berlin, ignoring dire warnings from China.

The improvement in relations is partly a result of China realizing that with Merkel, what she says is what she means.

The chancellor has managed during the visit to meet a few figures from what diplomats call 'civil society.' She met six graduate students, had a chat at the embassy with the editor of a critical weekly and was scheduled to meet a Catholic archbishop.

Li Jinping, a 47-year-old Chinese human rights advocate, dismissed it as window-dressing.

'They are talking about money and their interests, not about justice and rights,' he told dpa. Li Jinping was freed in July after nine months in jail and mistreatment in a psychiatric clinic.

In Berlin, an opposition Green Party human rights spokesman, Volker Beck, accused Merkel of a missed opportunity.

'In her eagerness to please, the chancellor has let herself be led around by the nose,' he said in a statement. 'It's not enough to recite the words 'human rights' a couple of times ... There are serious human rights breaches going on.'

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