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This April 6 is the second day of Emmanuel Macron’s visit to China. The French president is in Beijing and met with Prime Minister Li Qiang in the morning before an important meeting planned with President Xi Jinping. Paris continues to believe that Beijing can play a role in resolving the Ukrainian conflict.
With RFI correspondent in Beijing, Stéphane Lagarde.
A name and a concept are in the papers this Thursday morning in Beijing. This is a classic: the Chinese government highly appreciates General De Gaulle and remembers him on every French official visit to China. France was the first Western country to establish diplomatic relations with Mao’s China in 1964, a date that will be celebrated with great pomp and circumstance next year, Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday.
“The Chinese have always appreciated France’s strategic autonomy and independent diplomacy amid international turmoil,” says the Huanqiu Shibao daily. That is, a France independent of the United States and that tries to “reestablish Europe as the ‘third way’ between the United States and China.”
A different attitude than the United States
This concept of the “third way” would have been whispered by an “executive of the office of the French presidency”, according to the newspaper Cankao Xiaoxi, which states that “Emmanuel Macron will express France’s position on Ukraine during his meeting with Xi Jinping, and a ‘different path’ that differs from the systematic opposition attitude of the United States”. The problem is that we are no longer in 1964, but just over a year after Russia invaded the Ukraine.
Emmanuel Macron pointed out that China, due to its proximity to Russia, “can play an important role” in one way or another on Ukraine. But he also reminded the Chinese president that “anyone who helps the aggressor – by supplying arms to Moscow – would be complicit in the violation of international law.”
Balance
France is walking a tightrope in its negotiations, especially since the economic relationship must also be reactivated. Many big bosses are present in the delegation. Care is taken with everything that can be delicate on a trip like this. On Wednesday, for example, they called for the president not to be photographed in front of a piece of art showing a fishing net filled with Covid masks at a museum in northern Beijing, saying that could upset the Chinese side.
In addition, this visit by Emmanuel Macron has the status of a state visit, with all the protocol that this entails. At the same time, Chinese diplomacy has not “informed” the French correspondents, unlike the previous visit. And the places for foreign journalists who wish to cover this Thursday visit to the Great Hall of the People are limited.
