Chinese President Xi Jinping returns to Europe tomorrow after five years. President Emmanuel Macron is expected in Paris on Monday where a trilateral meeting will be held in which the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen will also take part. “It is not the first time – explains the deputy chief spokesperson of the Commission Arianna Podestà – that we see a meeting taking place in this format: we will remember the visit of President Macron and the president to China in April last year. It is a similar format”.
The issues on the table
The war in Ukraine. The conflict in the Middle East. But also trade and investments. They are among the issues that will be at the top of the agenda of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s first visit to Europe in five years, after the ‘isolation’ of the Asian giant during the Covid-19 pandemic.
A return, writes Foreign Policy, with a new mission: to limit the damage in the face of a European attitude towards China has soured significantly, fueled by deepening divisions over trade and frustrations over Beijing’s expanded economic and military cooperation with Russia. Paris is the first stop, 60 years after the start of relations between the People’s Republic and France.
The Ukraine knot
In February, the head of Chinese diplomacy, Wang Yi, was in Paris. Last year Macron concluded his visit to the Asian giant, saying he was counting on Xi to “bring Russia to reason” on Ukraine. Now the visit to France by the Chinese leader, accompanied by his wife Peng Liyuan, comes after weeks of tension over suspected cases of espionage in Europe. Le Figaro writes of a “delicate diplomatic exercise, given China’s brazen support for Putin’s war in Ukraine and the risks that Chinese electric cars” produced in the Asian giant with state subsidies “pose to the European automotive industry”.
Xi, who will be in France on Monday and Tuesday, wants to “manage the damage to relations caused by China’s position in the Russian war in Ukraine – observed Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, quoted by Foreign Policy – China wants to maintain affinity with Europe”. And “the Chinese want to underline that ‘de-risking’ is neither positive nor constructive for bilateral economic relations.”
But the analyst also doubts the success of the strategy. Macron receives Xi after the mid-April mission to China of the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and the more recent one to Beijing of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken (with “disappointing results”, according to Le Figaro). Yesterday evening there was news of a private dinner in Paris between Macron and Scholz, two leaders who have had various clashes in recent years, starting with the sending of ground troops to Ukraine. A hypothesis, the latter, which Macron relaunched in an interview with the Economist. The possible imposition of EU duties on Chinese electric cars is another reason for tension between France and Germany.
China expects important results
For the official media of the Asian giant, the mission to Europe is an opportunity to “write new chapters of friendship”. The Chinese ambassador in Paris, Lu Shaye, said he was convinced that “thanks to the strategic communication” between Macron and Xi, “this time important consensus and results will be achieved”.
The Elysée confirmed that on the table there will be “international crises, starting with the war in Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East, trade issues, cooperation in the scientific, cultural and sports fields” and “our common actions of facing global challenges, in particular the climate emergency, the protection of biodiversity and the financial situation of vulnerable countries”. After Paris, official commitments will continue in the Hautes Pyrenees, dear to Macron.
As Europeans, Macron told the Economist, it is in our interest “to ensure that China has a say in the stability of the international order.” AND “we must work with China to build peace”we must “do everything possible to engage China on major global issues and talk about economic relations based on reciprocity.”
But there are also human rights. Macron “must clarify to Xi that Beijing’s crimes against humanity have consequences for China’s relations with France”, asked Maya Wang, China director of Human Rights Watch, who denounces how the situation of respect for human rights has gotten much worse since Xi came to power.
After the stop in France (American President Joe Biden is expected to arrive in Paris in June), Xi will land in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary and in Serbia. The entire mission will be followed carefully in Washington. Vladimir Putin, who has entered into an “unlimited” alliance with Xi, is expected to arrive in China at the end of May.
