Things could hardly have got off to a worse start for the largest book fair in the world this year. At a public symposium organized ahead of the festival in mid-September, the Chinese delegation spontaneously stood up and walked out when the two dissident writers Bei Ling and Dai Qing were called to the stage. After a moment's silent consternation in the room, another participant, Herbert Wiesner, general secretary of the independent writer's association PEN, took to the stage and called after the officials, "That is the wrong signal!"

Such a protest was not only the wrong signal for official China, but also for the symposium, which was entitled "China and the World - Perceptions and Realities," and the book fair as a whole. The symposium was supposed to dismantle prejudices, instead they were reinforced.

To compound the scandal, fair director Juergen Boos then removed the two writers from the fair's program, apparently under pressure from the Chinese delegation. This caused enough of a public outcry to cause a u-turn and the two writers were readmitted.

Despite the repeated reassurance of fair organizers that it would not allow China to dictate its agenda, they were powerless to prevent the state from barring the attendance of key critical authors like Yan Lianke, who wrote a celebrated fictionalized account of the AIDS epidemic in rural China allegedly caused by corrupt state officials.

Boos has therefore left himself open to criticism both for making China this year's honored guest and for buckling under pressure when the fair's democratic principles were on the line.

Merkel meets China's potential new leader

That the Frankfurt Book Fair has attained political significance can be seen in the presence of Chancellor Angela Merkel and Chinese Vice-President Xi Jimping, who opened the event on Tuesday. A day earlier, Merkel seized the chance to have what was described as a working lunch with the man many expect to be China's next president.

If the Buchmesse provided a good occasion to catch up with Jimping, the furore surrounding the dissident writers at the fair put the question of human rights back into the middle of the debate. Though Merkel's office stressed that the lunch was to be informal and there was to be no press conference on its content, Merkel promised to bring up the thorny issue.

"In my talks I will make it clear to Chinese representatives that freedom of opinion is not a threat, but an opportunity," Merkel said in her weekend podcast.

Professor Werner Pfennig, who specializes in China and East Asia at the political science department of the Free University in Berlin, sees this secrecy very much in line with diplomatic protocol. "Whenever a senior politician travels to China, they get a file full of cases from Amnesty International or a similar human rights organization which they address with Chinese authorities behind closed doors. But these issues are never broached in public," he told Deutsche Welle.

The present controversy at the Buchmesse, then, will not have an immediate effect on Germany's relations with China. Heribert Dieter is a research fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs: "I don't think this will burden relations any further," Dieter told Deutsche Welle, "These are not developments which will disturb Mrs. Merkel. Leaving the room like that is a problem for the external presentation of the state of China, not for Germany. I don't think China does itself any favors by creating a controversy around these dissident writers, but that is an issue that has to be dealt with in Beijing, not in Germany."

Extra confidence through the economic crisis

To a certain extent, the issue of human rights has been eclipsed by the economic crisis. This is currently the central issue in Germany's dialogue with China. "The fact that the financial crisis did not develop into a serious worldwide depression, is, among things, down to the crisis management of the Chinese government. This has strengthened China's position in international politics," Dieter says. "One of the side effects of the economic crisis has been to make China even more confident on the international stage. This has increased the determination of China to insist on keeping human rights an internal affair."

Pfennig agrees that a spat at a cultural event, however public, will do little to change China's political or economic ties with Germany. "There is no direct relationship between economic ties and the guest country at a book fair. Certain political events, like Merkel's reception of the Dalai Lama at the chancellery, can slow down economic relations."

Not that the book fair is a futile intellectual exercise, "If the book fair can create discussions which are political, even though they are in a literary and aesthetic context, then I think that is a very positive development. But business leaders won't start taking more time to read books," said Pfennig.

But Germany remains one of China's closest friends in the West. When the Dalai Lama was invited to walk into the United States Congress with the president himself and the Dalai Lama held a ceremony there, China made much less of a fuss than when Merkel received the religious leader in her office.

"The American reception had a much greater diplomatic significance. The Chinese response when this was pointed out was, 'Yes, but we didn't expect that from our friends in Germany,' " Pfennig told Deutsche Welle.

Author: Ben Knight
Editor: Rob Mudge