Yeah, it's like, totally unreasonable to link human-rights issues with not selling China weapons.

Chirac has gone Through the Looking Glass.

OJ - Please explain "no vouchers?" . . .

Reference to oil-for-food bribes/coalition of bribed?

Thank you.

Note, not even ambiguity on Taiwan question. Open hostility to 22-million person "Chinese" democracy with two prez elections under its belt. Endorsment of "through use of force" Beijing doctrine. France is ENEMY of Taiwan.

(and of US, of course.)

No vouchers, but a rain check:

We will gladly buy your high-speed train as soon as you provide 100% financing for the first dozen and sign over all your engineering intellectual property to us free of charge so we can build the next 100 trains ourselves.

If French weapons work as well as French cars or French aircraft carriers, the PRC should avoid them like the plague.

No, non, non, buy their ships for military transport. They'll die of radiation poisoning.

French cars -- Renault for example -- are on the same general quality level as Volkswagen. It used to be, if you opened the hood of a Citroen, it would look like a bowl of spaghetti (a confusing tangle of hoses and cables) but those days are long past.

The TGV hi-speed train system has never had a large-scale disaster in nearly 30 years of operation.

50 percent of French electricity generation is nuclear.

Airbus is largely a French product.

Acutally, 77% of French electricity is nuclear.

Renault has done a good job of saving Nissan.

Now, if Carrafour (sp.?) would come to the US, maybe we would see Wal-Mart on the defensive, at least a little bit.

Eugene,

I've lived in France. I've leased cars in France. Many of my relatives live in France, and own French cars. French cars are a disaster. My great-uncle had a Renault where the spare tire was kept on a rack above the engine!!! I had one where whenever I opened the window the heater would go on, you could watch the thermostat move as if by a poltergeist.

OTOH, French trains are good and they have mastered nuclear power, which we have not.

Have you ever flown in an Airbus? I refer to it as the 'Flying Breadtruck' because it shakes and has no ventilation. If an airline is going to put me in an Airbus, I switch airlines.

My great-grampaw drove a Model T. Had to crank-start it to get the motor to turn over.

Bart:

French nuclear power is based on Westinghouse technology, with very little differences. They use it more than we do because their central government can do what it wants. Things are different here. To say that they have mastered it and we have not is misleading. We have about 110 operating reactors, and they have about 80.

Their one attempt at something unique, the Phenix and Super-Phenix (breeder reactors) did not go well (the cooling lines kept leaking).

Eugene,

I'm talking about the 1990s.

Jim,

I grew up near a nuclear power plant in Oyster Creek. It was constantly on the fritz, and I'm pretty sure it's been closed down. In France, you never read about that kind of stuff. It's one of the few non-culinary things the French do well.