Emmanuel Macron receives his counterpart Xi Jinping in Paris today and tomorrow. A visit with great fanfare which responds to the exceptional welcome given, 13 months ago, to the French president in China. But the pomp and superficial warmth of the receptions cannot make us forget that the disputes between China and France — and more broadly, between China and Europe — are real and deep.
Economic tensions are added to the serious international political issues (Gaza, but especially Ukraine) against the backdrop of a trade war. China, in defiance of the rules and spirit of the World Trade Organization, which it joined 22 years ago, is heavily subsidizing its overproducing sectors. Which are invading world markets – and particularly European markets – by selling electric cars, computers, telecommunications equipment, etc. at knockdown prices.
But the importance of a symbolic anniversary (the 60e bilateral relations, established by Charles de Gaulle in 1964 – the same year when China, then an economic dwarf, became a nuclear power) and the need to maintain dialogue prevailed.
Emmanuel Macron, a bit like with Vladimir Putin in 2022, hopes, in the face of Xi Jinping, to put the “prestige of France” and his personal capacity for seduction at the service of his diplomacy to coax the interlocutor. It must be said that his state visit to China, almost a full week, in April 2023, gave rise to many smiles and outpourings.
But this is the same man who, in an interview with The Economist published last Thursday, speaks of a Europe “in mortal danger”, facing “three simultaneous challenges”: the technological challenge facing China and the need for reindustrialization of Europe. The democratic challenge: maintaining the liberal pluralist system in the face of the onslaught of “populism, nationalism and disinformation”.
And then the strategic and military challenge. Macron still believes, not only in the necessity, but in the possibility of a properly European defense, in the emergence of a real strategic bloc in Europe, between, on the one hand, a more isolationist and less reliable United States. …and on the other, a Russian-Chinese alliance which is taking shape.
According to Macron, “Russia today is in a posture of total war.” It “plays regional destabilization wherever it can. […] Through her behavior, she has become a threat to the security of Europeans.”
Subjects that do not make one smile, especially since Paris wants to put on the table the question of Beijing’s support for Russia at war. Press release from the Élysée: “The president will discuss the concerns […] on the activity of certain Chinese companies that could participate directly or contribute significantly to the Russian war effort. »
Certainly, China – unlike the United States and many European states with Ukraine, an attacked country – does not directly supply weapons to Russia. Beijing seems to want, for the moment, to maintain this “red line” of appearances. More than the direct supply of weapons, it is the deliveries of machine tools and components for the production of these weapons that are in question. And there, behind appearances, indirect aid flows freely. Thanks to the commercial transactions of its companies, supplies of “civilian” drones, electronic parts for guidance systems, etc., Beijing allows Moscow to operate its military industry at full capacity.
We must focus on the words of Xi Jinping, published Sunday in Le Figaro upon his arrival in Paris. It affirms China’s love for “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference, equality and mutual benefit, peaceful coexistence.” Pure communist rhetoric… and so many principles flouted by Russia in the face of Ukraine. But Beijing, rhetorically aligned with Moscow, prefers to blame NATO.
Xi adds that “since the founding of New China more than 70 years ago, it has never started a war or occupied a single inch of other people’s land.” For the record: China invaded Tibet in 1950, then repressed the resistance (bloody crushing of the 1959 revolt) and methodically colonized this territory, to the point of making the Tibetans at home a minority, a people today in the process of assimilation and folklorization. The policy carried out in Xinjiang against the Uighurs, with gigantic “re-education camps”, is even more radical.
In February 1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam, triggering a month-long war that left tens of thousands dead. After the fighting ends, China’s withdrawal will never be complete. We can also recall that, in the brief border clash with the USSR in 1969, it was China which attacked first. Ditto for several incidents with India. In the South China Sea, China practices – in international waters, despite the name of the territory – a regional imperialism based on military occupation and the “politics of fait accompli”… in the face of disastrous Vietnamese and Filipino neighbors. The judgment of the International Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2016 — favorable to Manila — was treated with complete contempt by Beijing.
And we didn’t talk about Taiwan. So, for the “imperialist virginity” of a pacifist China that teaches lessons… there is room for criticism: will Emmanuel Macron be able to resist the rhetoric of his interlocutor?
The position of “Macron the European” is all the more delicate since, on the other side of the Atlantic, the possibility of a return of Trumpian hostility towards the Old Continent is now on the horizon. . With a neighboring Germany which tends more to procrastinate, there is a lot on the shoulders of the president of old France who wants to play the saviors of Europe.
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