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06-04-2023
BEIJING/ TAIPEI: French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are set to arrive in China on Wednesday for a three-day state visit that will see them meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Macron will be accompanied by a delegation of more than 50 CEOs and meet with the French business community, but all eyes will be on how he and von der Leyen discuss the war in Ukraine with the Chinese leadership.
“The primary issue that Macron and von der Leyen will probably want to push on is to help get some support from China in dealing with Russia and to help advance on that front,” Zsuzsa Anna Ferenczy, an associate research fellow at Sweden’s Institute for Security and Development Policy, told Al Jazeera.
“Realistically, I don’t think we can expect much, but I think clearly everyone agrees that that’s the priority.”
China is officially neutral on the war but has propped up Russia economically and diplomatically in the face of Western sanctions. Xi also has the ear of Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he shares a close friendship spanning more than a decade. In March, the duo signed a Sino-Russian strategic partnership during Xi’s state visit to Moscow.
At the G20 summit in November, Macron called for China to play a “greater mediation role” in the war but Beijing has yet to advance its role beyond issuing a 12-point peace plan that has received a lukewarm response in Kyiv and Western capitals.
Macron’s trip is his first to China since the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in early 2020, when Beijing effectively shut its borders to travel. The French leader last visited the country in 2019.
His trip follows one made by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in November but it has already taken a different tone.
Scholz’s trip was widely criticized in Europe as too conciliatory towards Beijing, with the German leader’s efforts to shore up the country’s business interests taking precedence over pushing China to join the negotiating table over Ukraine.
This time, however, Xi can expect pushback.
Macron and United States President Joe Biden agreed in a telephone call ahead of the French leader’s trip to engage China to hasten the end of the war in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said on Wednesday.
“The two leaders have mentioned their joint willingness to engage China to accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine and take part in building sustainable peace in the region,” Macron’s office said in a statement.
During a speech in Brussels last week, von der Leyen publicly criticized Beijing’s “no limits” ties with Moscow in the face of an “atrocious and illegal invasion of Ukraine”.
“Any peace plan which would in effect consolidate Russian annexations is simply not a viable plan. We have to be frank on this point,” von der Leyen said, while also taking aim at China’s increasingly assertive posture on the South China Sea, the Chinese-Indian border and Taiwan.
“How China continues to interact with Putin’s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward,” she said.
Beijing said it was “disappointed” by her speech, according to its European Union ambassador Fu Cong.
Against such a tense backdrop, Macron is expected to ask China to not supply Russia with weapons. Beijing is not known to have supplied weaponry to Russia despite requests from Moscow, although US officials have warned of the possibility.
Macron’s trip is not likely to produce a watershed moment but his diplomacy could produce wins down the road for European security, said Matthieu Duchâtel, the director of international studies at France’s Institut Montaigne. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
