French President Emmanuel Macron will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping during a three-day visit to China, his first since 2019.
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 leader.
“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.
“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 criticised 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.
Source: Aljazeera
