More cooperation on geopolitics, trade and the environment. The French president, Emmanuel Macronrepeated this Thursday in Beijing the European complaints, which are summarized in the trade imbalance y Ukraineseasoned today with the global warming. The unchanged litany over the years suggests little progress even though the summits exude cordiality and end with exciting joint commitments. Macron and his large business delegation will leave China this Friday with the planned economic agreements.
Macron rivals Pedro Sánchez in courting China. This is his fourth visit since he took office in 2017 and the desire to reward his efforts is perceived in Beijing. Xi Jinping He accompanied him in the last one to Guangzhou and in this one he will accompany him to Chengdu. They are extreme courtesies in a president who usually ends official visits after discussing important matters in the official meeting in the Great Hall of the People.
“Now, more than ever, the dialogue between France y China is vital,” Macron encouraged Xi this afternoon in that imposing Soviet-scented building in Tiananmen Square. “We face the risk of disintegration of the international order which brought peace to the world for decades,” he continued. More specifically, he asked him to join European efforts to achieve as soon as possible a cease-fire “in the form of a moratorium on attacks on critical infrastructure“Xi, according to the official transcript, has not deviated from the script: he supports all efforts for a peace that must be achieved with talks.
Alternative to the Trump plan
The liturgy of the more than four years of war in Ukraine is a dialogue of the deaf. Europe demands that China put pressure on Moscow, attributing to it an influence over its foreign policy that Beijing denies. China claims the neutralitydefends the trade with Russia and remember that it neither created this war nor, unlike Brussels and Washington, has it fueled it with weapons. He is also astonished that Brussels is now insistently demanding a ceasefire when years ago it disdained its peace plan which included it with the excuse that it would only serve to give Moscow a breath of fresh air. “We have to continue making efforts in favor of global peace and stability,” Macron repeated this Thursday, who defends a European alternative to Donald Trump’s plan because he understands it to be too sympathetic to Russian demands. Taking advantage of the spotlight, Xi has announced Additional $100 million for Gaza reconstruction.
Some 80 people have accompanied Macron to China. Among them are several ministers and about forty 40 senior executives. One objective is to clean up the pachydermal and growing trade deficit with Europe of 357 billion dollars. From Paris they explained it in the evening: it is necessary for China to consume more and export less and for Europeans to save less and manufacture more. Macron recalled that France invests 46 billion euros in China while the Asian country’s projects in its country barely add up to 12 billion. He has repeated the diagnosis of the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyenon his recent visit to Beijing: the seriousness of the situation is already “unsustainable.” It is therefore urgent to open a new stage of dialogue to fix the imbalances without the need for a trade war.
Xi has promised to support French companies that want to “take advantage of the opportunities of the Chinese market” and a “fair, transparent, non-discriminatory and predictable” business environment. The American and European chambers of commerce have denounced for years that Chinese promises to lift barriers to its market are blatantly unfulfilled.
Electric car tariffs
On the agenda were Chinese investigations into pork and European dairy products. The results have not been revealed but there is not much optimism as long as Brussels does not lift the tariffs on Chinese cars that motivated them. Nor was there anything about the purchase order for 500 airplanes Airbus because China, engaged in delicate trade negotiations with Washington, is counting on the financial health of Boeing as a pressure measure. They have signed a dozen cooperation agreements in the aerospace, nuclear energy, artificial intelligence and green economy sectors, among others.
“No matter how the international environment changes, our two countries must always demonstrate the independence y strategic vision of the great powers,” Xi said. France and China have had a lot of friction: the initiative to tax electric vehicles, for example, came from Paris. But in Beijing they appreciate that French independence, especially when it distanced itself from the most hostile voices that triumphed in Brussels, and even in the most noisy times Chinese respect has been noted. Xi and Macron’s trip to Chengdu reveals the harmony. In the capital of the pandas it is foreseeable that they will agree on a new loan of those lovely plantigrades after the couple who had lived in France for 13 years returned home last month for a well-deserved retirement.
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