Royal leaves China, sidesteps wall of criticism

Royal, who hopes to become France's first female president, met Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong during her stay as well as the head of the Communist Party's international department, a group of students and a "typical Chinese family". She also made high profile stopovers at the Great Wall and Forbidden City, smiling broadly for the cameras and peppering her comments with colorful Chinese proverbs.

Royal, who has little foreign diplomacy experience, said she wanted to better understand fast-growing China, the star of the world's new economic order.

Her opponents said her lack of experience was clear to see, ridiculed her failure to meet the Chinese president and accused her of ducking controversial issues such as China's human rights record.

"Segolene Royal has just made a troubling trip to China," said centrist presidential candidate Francois Bayrou.

"The pictures were very pretty, as always, but this voyage was entirely organized by the Chinese Communist Party ... in a country where from Tibet to Tiananmen (Square), everyone knows about the state of human rights," he said in Paris on Tuesday.

Patrick Devedjian, close to the right's presidential hopeful Nicolas Sarkozy, described the visit as a "humiliation" for France, which promotes itself as the birthplace of human rights.

Royal called on China to promote rights and appealed to the authorities to release jailed journalists, but she avoided the specific French term for human rights (droits de l'homme) -- a decision the media says was made so as not to cause any offense.

The Socialist favorite, who is running neck-and-neck with her rightist rival Nicolas Sarkozy in the polls ahead of the April and May elections, dismissed the attacks on Tuesday. "There has been criticism in France over my trip, which isn't a surprise. This is a game of politics. We're facing an important political election and anything goes so long as it sparks a controversy," she said.