Macron and Von der Leyen land in China to keep Xi Jinping away from the Kremlin | Atalayar

Emmanuel Macron is in China. The French president landed in Beijing on Wednesday morning accompanied by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to begin a three-day official visit which will lead them to meet the almighty Chinese president, Xi Jinping, and his recently appointed Prime Minister, Li Qiang, in a context still marked by the war in Ukraine and the apparent alliance between Beijing and Moscow. The European tandem will try to convince Xi to use his influence on Vladimir Putin’s Russia to stop the invasion.

Macron will be the second European leader to meet the Chinese president after the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who urged Xi during his visit to Beijing last week to talk to Zelenski about his peace proposal. Unlike Snchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the Elysée tenant has invited the Commission President for what is expected to be a crucial trip to assess the EU’s approach to relations with the Asian giant in the months coming. Xi will receive them on Thursday.

With the presence of Von der Leyen, Macron aims to project an image of unity of action within the EU-27, to strengthen his profile as the continent’s political leader – a leadership vacant since the retirement of Angela Merkel – and, by the way, to send a warning shot for Scholz, who decided to go alone to Beijing a few weeks after Xi’s unopposed revalidation as General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), launching pad for endorse his third term as head of the country.

French President @EmmanuelMacron arrived in #Beijing to kick off his state visit to #China April 5-7. #Macron leads a 60-person delegation that includes business executives, filmmakers, as well as artists as he seeks to solidify business and culture pic.twitter.com/CfH4hBQ6jG

Frontline (@FrontlineStory) April 5, 2023

Von der Leyen, on the other hand, had already made his position clear before the trip. She was particularly critical of China’s role in her speech in Brussels a week ago. “How China continues to react to the war waged by Putin will be a decisive factor for the future of relations between the EU and China”, warned the President of the Commission, aware of the economic interests of the Asian giant on the continent and the role that the institution it presides can play in modulating these variables. The head of European diplomacy, Josep Borrell, stressed on Wednesday that the European Union needs and wants to develop “a constructive engagement with China to solve global challenges”.

The EU High Representative for Foreign Policy will visit Beijing on the 13th, 14th and 15th of this month. A week before that, Macron and Von der Leyen will have three days to reconfigure their relationship with the new leadership of the Chinese government after the lifting of the severe restrictions put in place under the Covid zero policy. Restrictions that have kept China isolated for the past three years and which it is now trying to rebuild with all its might.

In a detail that symbolizes the good relations on both sides of the Atlantic, despite disagreements on certain fundamental aspects, Macron had a telephone conversation with the President of the United States, Joe Biden, before flying to Beijing. “The two heads of state spoke of their common desire to engage China to accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine and to participate in the construction of a lasting peace in the region”, indicated the Elysée in the press release. .

“China’s interest is that there is no lasting war,” Macron said during his first visit to China more than three years later. The tenant of Elyse believes that it is not in Beijing’s interest to supply arms to the Russian army for its offensive in Ukraine because this action would make it complicit in a flagrant violation of international law. China is “one of the rare countries, if not the only one” which could have a decisive impact on the conflict in Ukraine, “in one way or another”, recognized an adviser to the French president before the visit to remarks reported by the daily Le Monde.

The fear that China will follow Iran’s example and send weapons to Russia “has been expressed by many and we are expressing it too,” Macron said. But the embattled French head of state, who is going through his lowest hours since his re-election in April last year over a controversial pension reform that brought hundreds of thousands of protesters to the streets against him , also said he would not threaten to impose sanctions because “threats are never a good way to compromise.” On the other hand, Macron made a point of making a good-natured reference to the controversial 12-point project drawn up by Chinese diplomacy which envisages the cessation of hostilities in Ukraine: “It is a question of a desire to take responsibility and to try to build a path to peace”.

For Macron, dialogue with China is “essential”. China can ‘play an important role’ in resolving the conflict given its ‘close relationship with Russia, which has been reaffirmed in recent days’, he noted, referring to Xi’s official visit in Moscow in mid-March. The Chinese leader and Russian President Vladimir Putin sealed their “boundless friendship” at a reception with great fanfare in the halls of the Kremlin. Macron called for a “logic of blocks” in the face of concerns about future relations between China and the West.