Mr Herve Ladsous is worthy of his title as French ambassador to China, for he knows his host country pretty well - at least in one matter.

He said on Monday that he learned from Chinese tourism officials that "the Chinese government has not issued any notices discouraging tourists from going to France" and "I believe them."

French media reported earlier this month that the Beijing municipal government had issued "an order" to local travel agents asking them to "withdraw trips to France from their catalogue of tourism destinations".

It is true that the number of Chinese tourists to France has decreased dramatically in the past few weeks; but to attribute the sharp decline to a fabricated order by Chinese authorities is utterly ridiculous. How naive one would have to be to believe such a rumor.

A little reasoning will lead one to wave off the rumor as being unworthy of mention.

Would the Chinese government be so stupid as to take such an ostensibly ludicrous move? What would it gain from it? Would it do any good to anybody?

AFP said that an official from the Beijing tourism agency told its reporters that no such order had been given and that it had "simply reminded Chinese tourists to be careful about their security".

Probably that advice was where the rumor originated. But it is normal for any government to warn its citizens against possible security problems they may encounter when traveling in a foreign country. How can it be interpreted as an "order" of "boycott"?

The drop in Chinese tourist presence in France, and Europe as a whole, may stem from various causes.

First, summer is not a busy season for tourism. Second, the rise in air fares triggered by the oil price hike may have deterred some tourists. Third, the earthquake that caused heavy casualties in Sichuan has adversely affected Chinese people's mood, who traditionally choose not to take merry-making trips away from home at such sad moments. Fourth, there were some citizens who stated that they would boycott France in their overseas travels as a result of the anti-Chinese actions in the country when the Olympic torch relay was on in Paris.

Even if a boycott were the main reason for the decreasing number of Chinese tourists in Europe, it is of their own will. Why did our Western friends insist that it was a move by the Chinese government? Didn't they see how angry the Chinese people were when the torch relay was repeatedly disrupted in some Western cities?

Some people in the West seem to believe that the Chinese people are living under a totalitarian regime. They tend to think that the Chinese yearn for the Western world. They would not accept a scenario that the Chinese resist an opportunity to see the Western paradise.

The Chinese did once view the West as a sort of paradise in the 1980s when the country began to open to the outside world and they saw for the first time that lives in Western countries were not like what they had thought it to be. In later years, as exchanges became more and more frequent, the Chinese people learned that there were also dark sides in the West and that every country had its own advantages and disadvantages.

The biased attitude some Western people displayed toward China during the torch relay has caused a kind of disillusionment with Western "democracy and freedom" in some Chinese people, especially the young people.

The Chinese people's knowledge and understanding of the Western world has become more realistic. Ambassador Ladsous seems to know this well.

E-mail: liushinan@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 06/25/2008 page8)