HONG KONG - A failure of European countries to approve a new EU constitution could reduce trade tensions between the European Union and China, an analyst said Tuesday in an editorial.
Elsewhere in Asia, editorial opinion was divided over the impact of the French "no" vote on the future of European integration.
Commenting after nearly 55 percent of French voters rejected the constitution in a referendum held Sunday, Beijing University's Ye Zichenga predicted "an easing of commercial frictions" with China despite Beijing's comments Monday that it would scrap export tariffs on a range of textile goods in an abrupt reversal of its more conciliatory position.
The EU has been involved in an escalating trade war this year with China over the country's surging textile exports since the end of a global quota system.
Ye also said in the daily Beijing News that a resounding "no" could delay the lifting of an embargo on the EU's sale of arms to China.
Europe has been deliberating in recent months whether to lift an arms embargo imposed after a massacre of democracy activists in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989.
But with the future of the EU constitution now in question, Ye said European countries would be too preoccupied with their own affairs and the EU's international role would likely be diminished.
"Europe is going to be concentrating on digesting its difficulties and internal problems", Ye wrote.
While nine European countries have approved the new constitution, it must be ratified by all 25 member states to become effective.
Elsewhere in Asia, media took note of the setback caused by France's rejection, but few would go so far as to say hope for eventual European integration was dead.
"A project to establish an integrated Europe over the past decades has been suspended and no one can tell when it will restart," the popular Tuoi Tre daily in Communist Vietnam said.
Vietnam's Dai Doan Kiet saw the referendum vote as putting a full stop to European integration and said it was "a warning for EU politicians as some of their policies do not correspond with the wish of the people".
Japan's business daily, Nihon Keizai Shimbun, said in an editorial: "Since the end of the Cold War, European integration has rapidly accelerated but it now faces the most critical stage."
The liberal daily Asahi Shimbun commented that the rejection "was a serious blow".
Bangkok's newspaper The Nation noted that polls indicate voters in The Netherlands will also reject the constitution in a referendum on Wednesday, a sentiment which "could prove contagious and spread to other EU countries, pushing further integration back for years".
But the Indian Express said in an editorial that the French vote, while underlining the fissures in Fortress Europe, was in no way the end of plans for a unified Europe.
"To see it as the death knell to the notion of a European Union is an obvious over-reaction," it said.
Another Indian newspaper, The Hindu, said the rejection "reflects the tremendous complexities of creating a transnational federation while retaining the sovereignty of nation states... The idea of a united Europe has certainly taken root but it is not so powerful as to relegate to second place popular feelings, negative or positive, on key domestic issues."
Bangladesh's New Age daily similarly argued that the French "no" does not negate the notion of European union.
"The bigger point, though, is that despite the collapse of the European idea in France, the principle of European integration is one that has taken hold of the public imagination. A unified Europe cannot now be wished away that easily."
Australian newspapers reflected the divided opinion on the future of European integration.
The Australian daily described the French result as a "body blow" to the vision of an integrated Europe from which it may never recover.
But the Sydney Morning Herald was more optimistic, saying the plan for Europe "will falter, but it will not fall".
05/31/2005 12:49 GMT