Dec 23, 2009 3
On Copenhagen, culture, and China’s familiar negotiation tactic
I was just reading a pretty fascinating article over on The Guardian’s website entitled How do I know China wrecked the Copenhagen deal? I was in the room. Whether China was actually at fault here, I can’t say for sure. I suspect they are, but of course I was not in the room.
The one thing that I did take notice of in this discussion was that the Chinese reportedly used a tactic that I had seen before many times when I worked in China. They imposed a delay:
The Chinese premier, Wen Jinbao, did not deign to attend the meetings personally, instead sending a second-tier official in the country’s foreign ministry to sit opposite Obama himself. The diplomatic snub was obvious and brutal, as was the practical implication: several times during the session, the world’s most powerful heads of state were forced to wait around as the Chinese delegate went off to make telephone calls to his “superiors”.
