He explained in Brussels that Peking had now said it would allow a visit by Mary Robinson, the UN High commissioner on Human Rights; and that whether the EU would press a UN resolution next year would depend on progress - including the release of political prisoners. All this Patten privately passed on to the Foreign Office shortly afterwards.The supposed threat to trade with China from a robust attitude to human rights is anyway extremely doubtful. Between 1992 and 1997 when Patten was incurring the wrath of China hands such as Sir Percy Cradock and others by pressing for democracy in Hong Kong trade with China doubled. The drive to realise China's potential as a market probably isn't much affected one way or the other by a tough line on human rights.The shift of policy towards China certainly wasn't Cook's alone and no doubt reflects the business orientation of New Labour Cook's sincerity on human rights is real. Which was not surprising since in a long conversation in London with Patten in January Wei had dwelt on the huge importance attached by Peking to Western attitudes to a UN resolution. He said that he had noticed how his own prison conditions had improved whenever leading Western, including EU countries, were publicly attacking China over its abysmal human rights record.

All the signs, in other words, are that China reacts to pressure better than to the increased "dialogue" the EU is now proposing. Wei pointed out that those who have agitated for democracy since the Tiananmen Square massacre are watched and persecuted on a daily basis by the secret police. And he declared that the "values of Western politicians are in retreat so that they can adapt themselves to Chinese criteria". As well he might have been given that the EU decision came at the same time as fresh exposure of the gruesome sale of human organs by Chinese agencies and the arrest of further dissidents in the run-up to the People's National Congress this week. This year, however, their case found more of an echo; Cook had spoken after the election of Britain's building a new relationship with China and submission of yet another probably doomed human rights resolution would not exactly help her to do so.

The principal argument from corporatists and China hands among ministers and officials was that - thanks to diplomatic and commercial pressure from China - the resolution was invariably voted down, so pressing it threatened the trading interests of countries pressing it without any gain.But Wei doesn't see it that way. In Le Monde on Wednesday he expressed his "deep indignation" at the "quite stupefying" EU foreign ministers' decision and was withering about the idea that his own release last year indicated that human rights were improving in the largest, and one of the most repressive states in the world. The outcome was a testament to Cook's skill as a chairman, for which he is steadily building a reputation during the British EU presidency. It goes further than the doves like France would have liked but a good deal less far than Denmark would have preferred. But it also reflected a shift from the British government's position before the election. For several years now Britain has joined the US in submitting a strongly critical resolution on human rights in China to the annual UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva This year it will not be doing so.