I’m not sure exactly what went down at the side meeting between French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Chinese President Hu Jintao at the London G-20 summit. But it seems like it must have been one wildly successful pow wow. Last week, the two countries signed a string of — yup, you guessed it — nuclear deals. This past week, former President Jacques Chirac — a noted sinophile who once corrected a Chinese museum curator about the details of an antique vase on display — visited Beijing, and was greeted with a Chinese call to “boost the China-France comprehensive strategic partnership.”
Coming just months after Hu essentially made a Tour de France from the outside to avoid setting foot in the Hexagone, in protest of Sarkozy’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, that’s quite a thaw.