We know about French Prez Jacques Chirac and his whimsy about a superpower to counter the untrammeled will of a United States which threatens to consume the entire globe in the absence of the Soviet Union to counter her expansionist schemes.

So it goes. The French tried that game, enlisting the Russians and Germans, over the UNSC feud over whether or not Saddam should get the hook. Saddam’s gone, Iraq is working on independence, and Chirac’s axis has fallen apart.

Wait…

Said the PRC’s deputy Maoist dictator, Premier Wen Jiabao, at a meeting with the European leaders and Eurocrats Wednesday: “It is our hope that the European Union will become our biggest partner in economic cooperation and trade.” To the definite exclusion of the United States.

European Commission President Romano Prodi, the Italian for whom no European outside of government voted, proclaimed in response: “We need to intensify our relations, both in the trade and investment sectors. We must become the biggest partners. We must have the biggest relations - more than anywhere in the world.” He did not name the United States, but we were mentioned tacitly.

Okay, Chirac and the poet DeVillepin could be dancing an Axis/Vichy jig right about now. The dream is alive.

Or is it?

I don’t think so. What is the main thing — perhaps the only thing — standing between the United States of America and the People’s Republic of China? Human rights. In the PRC, there are none. They torture, kill, twist, manipulate, destroy. And the second baby must be eliminated.

Commerce Secretary Don Evans brought up the PRC’s disrespect for intellectual property. The Europeans say, whatever. The PRC’s human rights record draws yawns from the Eurocrats.

There’s what this means. The Europeans are working out a deal with the PRC through which all refugees — political by definition of the Chinese state — would be returned to the PRC and their storied Lao gai.

The world’s largest trading partners — on the corpses of millions of dead Chinese.