Beijing - Chinese president and Communist Party chief Hu Jintao may be playing the "French card," with the warm welcome for Nicholas Sarkozy during the French president's first official visit to Beijing this week interpreted by some as a calculated snub to Germany. While relations between Beijing and Berlin remain rocky, Sarkozy was feted at a banquet in the Chinese state guest house, which contrary to custom even saw French cuisine on the menu.
Meanwhile China's state-controlled media are taking pains to emphasize the differences between Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose meeting in Berlin with the Dalai Lama has plunged Sino-German ties into an "ice age."
China has halted a series of top-level contacts with Germany since Merkel held a "private exchange of views" with the Dalai Lama in the chancellery in Berlin on September 23.
Whether he likes it or not, Sarkozy now appears to be the one to profit in the row over Merkel's China policies.
The multi-billion-dollar business deals inked by Hu and Sarkozy in the Great Hall of the People on Monday, on the face of it serve to prove this.
Some Chinese commentators would even have it believed that the Germans are extremely angry - but this would be to overlook that Merkel has as much reason as Sarkozy to celebrate the Chinese purchase of 160 Airbus jets.
The success of the lengthy negotiations on a French-Chinese nuclear deal also have nothing to do with current ill-feeling between Berlin and Beijing.
Global energy company Westinghouse in 2006 sealed a contract to construct four nuclear reactors in China - and now, at last, French firm Areva is to build two reactors in the south of the country.
While China's puppetmaster propaganda authorities permit the country's state media to sharpen its anti-Merkel rhetoric, local experts are more restrained, seeing Sarkozy's visit as a continuation of the China policies of his predecessor Jacques Chirac.
According to researcher Liu Jiansheng from the Foreign Ministry's Institute for International Studies, in general terms Germany and France march to the same tune, sharing "united positions" on thorny issues in Chinese relations, including trade rows and calls for a upwards revaluation of the Yuan.
Sarkozy scores over his German counterpart on one aspect alone, according to Professor Shi Yinhong of the Peoples' University: "He has learned from the experience of Merkel that the Dalai Lama and Tibet are very thorny issues for China."
In any case, the French leader sets economic and trade issues at the core of his relations with China, Shi says, declining to make human rights a central theme.
In fact while industrial bosses are accompanying Sarkozy on his freshman Beijing trip, his Senegalese-born Human Rights Minister Rama Yade remains at home in Paris, as if there was nothing for her to do in China.
As the propaganda machine relishes the opportunities to needle Germany afforded by the Sarkozy visit, diplomats in Beijing say the Germans will have to wrap up a while more against the "icy wind" currently blowing from Beijing.
The influential newspaper Zhongguo Qingninabao, published by the youth wing of the Communist Party, gloomily predicts Sino-German economic relations "will certainly be impaired."
China's protests against receiving the Dalai Lama are also aimed to ensure the Asian country is not see as a mere paper tiger, the paper said.
Otherwise the international community could be left believing that when it comes to China, "little rain follows much thunder."
