Mr. Hu Jintao and Mr. Sarkozy

In London China pressed that advantage most visibly with France, which during the past year has been singled out for opprobrium by Chinese nationalists. Before the G20 gathering, China had not scheduled a meeting between Mr Hu and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, even though Mr Hu was to hold bilateral talks with other world leaders, including his first encounter with Barack Obama.

Mr Sarkozy’s offence had been to meet the Dalai Lama last December. This was the last straw for China after unruly protests by Tibet supporters against an Olympic torch relay through Paris in April 2008 and a threat (unfulfilled) by Mr Sarkozy the previous month that he might boycott the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in August 2008 because of Chinese behaviour in Tibet. China responded to his meeting with the Dalai Lama by aborting a summit with European Union leaders due to be hosted by France. It is now to be held in late May in the Czech Republic, which has taken over the rotating EU presidency.

Mr Hu’s speech to the G20 was entitled “Co-operating hand-in-hand, pulling together in times of trouble”. But it was only after France had agreed to issue an unusual joint statement with China, setting out the French position on Tibet, that Mr Hu arranged a separate meeting with Mr Sarkozy in London. In the statement, France said it did not support Tibetan independence in “any form” and that it regarded Tibet as an “inseparable” part of China. It fell short of a promise not to meet the Dalai Lama again, but China was clearly pleased by such a formal, explicit rejection of Tibetan independence by a Western power.

Mr Sarkozy, it appears, did not cave in entirely to Mr Hu. During the summit itself the two leaders sparred over whether the G20 should publish a blacklist of tax havens. Mr Hu objected to the idea (apparently fearing that Hong Kong and Macau might end up being tarred). In the end, Mr Obama took them aside separately and got them to agree that the G20 should merely “note” a list of such havens published by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The list did not name the two Chinese territories.