French President Emmanuel Macron will seek next week in China a “space” for dialogue with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping on the conflict in Ukraine, but France also wants to avoid any possible “disastrous decision” from Beijing aimed at supporting Moscow militarily.
“If China takes this disastrous decision, there is a major strategic effect on the conflict,” warned an adviser to the French head of state.
“We want to avoid the worst and that’s why we have to hire them, to present our position to them,” he added in front of a few journalists.
The head of French diplomacy Catherine Colonna had already indicated on Thursday that the president would warn Chinese leaders “that it is essential to refrain” from supporting the Russian war effort.
In the immediate future, Emmanuel Macron wants to try to “find a space” with Beijing for “initiatives” in order to “support the Ukrainian civilian population”, but also “to identify a medium-term path for a solution to the conflict”, said the French presidency by presenting the objectives of this state visit.
According to Paris, this dialogue is all the more crucial since “China is the only country in the world capable of having an immediate and radical impact on the conflict, in one direction or the other”.
France still hoped recently to convince the Chinese president to exert his “influence” on his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to push him towards a negotiated outcome to the conflict. Even that it plays “a role of mediation”.
But Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow ten days ago, during which the two leaders praised their “special” relationship and sharply attacked the West, seems to have caused the French authorities to scale back their ambitions.
“We are very lucid,” assured the French presidency, noting in particular that China has no intention of condemning Russia.
Emmanuel Macron is going to China from Wednesday to Friday to set this “re-engagement approach” to music after a long period without personal contact due to Covid-19, broken by a meeting with Xi Jinping in November on the sidelines of a summit in Indonesia.
He is expected Wednesday afternoon in the Chinese capital, where he will meet a French community tested by long restrictions linked to the pandemic, lifted only at the end of 2022.
On Thursday, before a state dinner, he will meet with Chinese leaders, with a scheduled tete-a-tete with President Xi and a joint sequence also with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will previously be at the Élysée to prepare for the joint visit with Emmanuel Macron.
Finally, the Head of State will travel to Canton on Friday, where he will interact with Chinese students and will end his visit with a “privileged moment” for dinner with Xi Jinping, “in a place chosen” by the latter, according to the official. ‘Elysium.
Paris judges Beijing “indispensable” on many global challenges, first and foremost the fight against global warming.
Emmanuel Macron will be accompanied by around sixty heads of French companies, including those of Airbus, EDF, Alstom and Véolia, with an emphasis on energy transition. Contract signatures are expected, said the French executive without detailing them.
The president intends to continue to push for “better access to the Chinese market” and “fair conditions of competition”, as during his two previous visits to China in 2018 and 2019, explained his entourage.
Emmanuel Macron, who according to those around him will raise the issue of human rights with Xi Jinping, finally wants to renew human contacts, particularly in the cultural field and exchanges between students from the two countries.
While the competition between China and the United States, the two leading world powers, risks turning into confrontation, France assumes to take “another path” in the relationship with the Asian giant.
“We are an ally of the Americans. There is no equidistance between China and the United States,” assured the French presidential adviser. But “we do not have the same positions as the United States vis-à-vis China, because we do not have the same interests”, “we do not have the same geography” nor “the same alliances than the Americans in the Pacific”.
03/31/2023 21:11:29 – Paris (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
