Paris rolls out the red carpet for Hu

France did more than roll out the red carpet for the state visit starting Monday of Chinese President Hu Jintao (胡錦濤). It lit up the Eiffel Tower in red and held an eye-popping weekend parade with more than 7,000 participants.

The parade down the Champs-Elysees on Saturday, coupled with Hu's four-day visit, is to fete 40 years of diplomatic ties with Beijing. France has dubbed this year the "Year of China" in France, but the parade also marked the Lunar New Year holiday.

An estimated 200,000 people thronged Paris' most famous avenue to gawk at the spectacle of giant dragons, some 50 floats, acrobats, martial arts experts, drummers or cymbal players.

Red lanterns lined the Champs-Elysees, and multicolored umbrellas added to the festival of colors.

At nightfall, the Eiffel Tower was awash in red, a spectacle to be repeated over the next week.

Hu, escorted by his French host, President Jacques Chirac, is to get his own viewing of the red tower today, when the "Year of China" is formally inaugurated and when Hu is to address French lawmakers, a privilege accorded but a handful of foreign leaders.

France is on the leading edge of European nations looking to strengthen ties with China. Then French President Charles de Gaulle and Chinese leader Mao Zedong (毛澤東) first agreed to diplomatic relations 40 years ago.

Today's China, with its expanding economy and increasing interdependence with Europe, makes stronger ties an important foreign policy initiative for Paris.

Concrete issues -- some of them thorny -- were on the agenda for Hu, who is traveling to Egypt, Gabon and Algeria after his Paris visit.

The reconstruction of Iraq will be discussed, according to Chinese diplomats. Beijing, like Paris, opposed the US-led military intervention in Iraq. China and France are both permanent UN Security Council members.

A EU ban on arms sales to China, which France has been working to lift, also is on the agenda. The embargo was imposed after the bloody 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

There is still concern here over China's human rights record highlighted by the Tiananmen crackdown.

The delicate question of human rights will "naturally be evoked,"' said an official in Chirac's entourage, asking not to be identified by name.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Hu will urge French leaders to continue their support of the ``one-China principle'' regarding Taiwan and oppose any formal move toward independence by the nation.

Hu is also expected to sign a joint operating agreement between China's TCL and France's Thomson SA, a lofty venture that would create the world's top TV maker -- with an annual expected revenue of more than euro 3 billion (US$3.5 billion).

France is bidding to work on a proposed high-speed railway linking Beijing and Shanghai. China said last week it had decided against using magnetic-levitation technology because of cost and logistical problems.

Local officials from the Greens party have said they would boycott a reception for Hu tomorrow at City Hall to protest human rights violations in China, and non-governmental organizations have called for a demonstration during Hu's speech to parliament.

Socialist lawmaker Jack Lang, a former minister, was quoted by the daily Le Monde as saying that diplomatic relations must not "lead us to keep silent about the absence of democracy in China."