Dec. 8 (Bloomberg) -- China rebuked French President Nicolas Sarkozy for meeting with the Dalai Lama, calling it a mistake that would damage relations between the two countries.

The meeting “severely undermined China’s core interest, gravely hurt the feelings of the Chinese people and sabotaged the political basis of China-France and China-EU relations,” Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister He Yafei said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site today.

Yesterday, he summoned French Ambassador Herve Ladsous in Beijing to lodge a protest, according to the statement.

Sarkozy, whose country holds the rotating European Union presidency, met with Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader on Dec. 6 at a gathering of Nobel Peace Prize laureates in Gdansk, Poland. Sarkozy had urged China to react “calmly” to the meeting.

While the Dalai Lama has recently been received by other European leaders, including Britain’s Gordon Brown and Germany’s Angela Merkel, China has focused its displeasure on France. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said on Dec. 4 business ties with France would suffer if the meeting went ahead.

“It’s the duty the French president to meet all Nobel peace prize winners who wish to meet him,” Sarkozy said today in Paris during a speech for the 60th anniversary of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He reiterated that “there’s only one China,” adding that the Beijing administration must have a bigger say in global governance.

‘Extremely Bad Precedent’

France is vulnerable to retaliation because Chinese purchases of products including Airbus SAS planes and Alstom SA high-speed locomotives require central-government approval.

By meeting with the Dalai Lama, France was “imposing its wrongdoing on the EU,” He said in the statement. This is an “extremely bad precedent.”

Human-rights demonstrations in April, as the Olympic torch passed through Paris on its way to Beijing, sparked a Chinese boycott of French goods and services. A month earlier, Sarkozy criticized China’s crackdown on Tibetan protesters.

Before the Olympic opening ceremony in August, the French president expressed official EU concern for imprisoned human- rights activists in a letter to China’s authorities.

In a commentary today, the state-run China Daily newspaper said Sarkozy had miscalculated how the Chinese public would respond to the meeting.

“Do not mistake spontaneous grassroots expressions of discontent for alleged government instigation,” the newspaper said. “Government preference may determine the purchase of Airbuses or Boeings, but it cannot force people to travel to places they dislike, be it Paris or Provence.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Dune Lawrence in Beijing at dlawrence6@bloomberg.net; Ed Johnson in Sydney at ejohnson28@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 8, 2008 09:35 EST