The China question -- which encompasses both the political and the economic interests of Europe -- dominates the editorial pages of Germany's papers on Tuesday. On balance, the analysis is that Germany is involved in a competition for Chinese favor, one that has as much to do with China's huge markets as it does with the German bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council.

In a long front-page editorial, the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung cautions all parties to proceed with care in China. "In Europe, the unstoppable rise of China is seen as predominantly positive: It is the development of a new major market for European products and a chance for China to improve the prosperity of its people." This view has as much to do with European values as it does with hopes for new markets. But the thinking behind it, the paper warns, may be too simplistic. As far as China's military interests go, the paper writes: "As long as it is 'only' focused on Taiwan, it won't bother political realists like the German chancellor or the French president. But recently, the spontaneously organized popular ire turned towards Japan." The result has been days of protests and violence against Japanese businesses and government buildings. This, the paper goes on to note, is an important lesson. "There is --and this is something Europe should keep in mind -- a big difference between having an expanding power as an immediate neighbor and watching it from a safe distance."

Whether Europe likes it or not, developing its foreign policy on China will have to involve the US somehow. As long as China won't submit to democracy, "suspicion is necessary." Moreover, "as long as European diplomacy is just competing for the favor of the Chinese government, it is going to have a shameful image."

The center-right daily Die Welt sees the protests in China as just another form of competition -- a political ploy by Peking to hurt Japan's chances in the UN Security Council. "In the political realm, Beijing leaves nothing to chance." But the same thing is happening in all countries that harbor new UN hopes, the paper writes, from Japan to South Korea, from Nigeria to South Africa. "Every government is exerting a lot of effort to knock off their respective competition." Even Germany is playing the game: "With its push for the lifting of the embargo, its hoping to gain Beijing's support when it comes to a seat on the UN Security Council." Round and round it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows. "In the end, the final judgement might be that it might be better to leave everything in the UN exactly as it is."

The Berliner Zeitung focuses on the myth of China's market, and writes that lifting the embargo may make things easier for German companies there. It used to be, as Siemens head Heinrich von Pierer once said, "The risk of not being in China is greater than the risk of being there." Now, the paper writes, "for a large German company, the risk ratios have inverted themselves." Volkswagen is facing huge losses in the most populous country in the world. The company "learned painfully that China's boom market was no self-operating machine." Schroeder's efforts, including possibly lifting the weapons embargo, are helping to pave the way. "The right business decisions, though, they will have to make for themselves."

Analyzing the tension between China and Japan, the business daily Financial Times Deutschland writes that "the reasons seem absurd, but the crisis is in bitter earnestness." Beneath all the rhetoric, the crisis is about the shifting power between two countries that "have developed an enormously successful economic symbiosis." Now, the paper says, China wants more economic power, and Japan is making bold moves in the political realm. That there is growing tension between the two is thus understandable, but doesn't excuse attacks on diplomats and foreigners. "For a country that wants to look like a dependable partner, popular unrest can't be used as a political instrument. If, though, Beijing should really not be in a position to stop the spontaneous violence," the paper warns, "the uncomfortable question" of why not will be raised.

Basque Vote

The editorial pages also save some space for the issue of Sunday's polls in the Basque region of Spain, which effectively ended the attempt by Basque premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe to create an "associated free state" and essentially secede from Spain. The Basque Nationalist party lost power in the region, while the Socialist party of Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero gained substantially.

The left-leaning Sueddeutsche Zeitung writes that "Spain's Basque region remains divided, and this vote hasn't changed that at all." But the vote did have serious consequences for the plans of Basque separatists, above all Ibarretxe. He now faces the choice of trying to align himself with the ETA, or moving towards the middle ground and pushing for less radical reforms of Basque autonomy. "This could calm tensions....The extremists remain isolated, and with the help of forceful prosecution, the weakened ETA could someday be no longer be a meaningful player."