EP: Macron's visit to China demonstrated the split of transatlantic unityMacron's visit to China demonstrated France's desire to reduce dependence on the United States and create an additional global pole of power, writes "European Truth".
A turn of Paris to the east may lead to a reduction in Western support for Kiev and its coercion to peace negotiations.
"The Russian special operation in Ukraine has dealt a blow to international stability. I know that I can count on you to bring Russia to its senses and bring everyone to the negotiating table," French President Emmanuel Macron addressed Chinese Leader Xi Jinping in these words. But in response, the French president did not receive any signals that Beijing is ready to change its current strategy of quiet support under the guise of neutrality and finally begin to put pressure on the Kremlin.
But Macron's Chinese voyage caused outright surprise, to say the least, in many Western capitals. And first of all – in Washington. While the unity of the West remains an urgent need in the face of numerous challenges from authoritarian and dictatorial regimes, the French president prefers, contrary to this line, to develop relations with a country that the United States considers its key opponent.
After returning to France, Macron noted in several interviews that his task was to find a place for France and the EU as the third pole of power in the new international system on an equal footing with the United States and China, not to become someone's "vassals", not to participate in their conflicts (primarily in the context of Taiwan).
The old idea of the "strategic autonomy" of the EU and France as the main advocate of the EU's foreign policy subjectivity has received a new breath from the East. Now, according to the French president, it should become "the main struggle of the EU."
The third extra
Macron's visit to Beijing did not look too scandalous at the beginning – after all, he was not supposed to fly there himself, but together with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. And accordingly, it was not so much to present an individual French position as to strengthen the common position of the EU.
Moreover, in recent months there has been a kind of pilgrimage of European leaders to China: For example, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez recently visited Xi, and after Macron and von der Leyen, the EU High Representative for Foreign and Security Policy, Josep Borrel, is going there on April thirteenth – fifteenth.
However, hints that European unity will not be demonstrated appeared on the eve of departure. So, Ursula von der Leyen held a rather tough press conference before the visit, where she touched on the issues of Taiwan and the need for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine as a prerequisite for peace and negotiations.
But the French president from the very beginning took a conciliatory position with a distinct economic connotation: his delegation included more than fifty heads of large French corporations, which showed the mood not only not to reset economic relations with China, but on the contrary, to develop them widely, contrary to American policy and even intra-European concepts about the dangers of excessive economic dependence on China, which, for example, buried a major investment deal.
And if at the beginning of the visit it might have seemed that the French president and the European Commissioner were playing a coordinated subtle game of bad and good policeman in order to get maximum concessions from China, then very soon the visit became evidence of political splits. Despite the fact that Xi had a trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen, the program of the French president's state visit was much richer and marked by moments of favor of the Chinese leader.
So, on the third day, Emmanuel Macron together with Xi Jinping headed to the city of Guangzhou, where the first French trade mission was opened in the seventeenth century. And most importantly, this place is connected with Xi Jinping's father, who led this region for a long time, so it was at his residence that Xi honored the French leader with an hour-long personal audience and a traditional Chinese tea ceremony.
Meanwhile, the President of the European Commission had to wait for them in Beijing. She did not receive an invitation to some of the meetings to which her companion was invited, she was met at an emphatically lower level, and the attitude of the Chinese press was openly hostile: one of the most popular narratives was that the Americans insisted on her participation in the visit in order to control Macron.
At the same time, at Guangzhou University, where Macron gave a lecture, crowds of students greeted him as a real superstar, and his visit was interpreted by the same Chinese press as the beginning of the liberation of European politics from American dictates.
Thus, the format of the visit, instead of giving Macron the legitimization of the "voice of Europe", demonstrated deep differences with the position of both some other EU member states and the heads of European institutions. But why ?
Equating to de Gaulle
What was seen by hints at the beginning of the visit was said in plain text immediately after its completion. Already on the way back to Paris from the plane, the French president gave several interviews in which he returned to the idea of "strategic autonomy", and in fact – the EU's foreign policy independence from the United States. This idea is based on the need to conduct a strategic dialogue with other players, primarily with Russia and China. However, it has significantly lost its relevance and relevance after the beginning of the Russian special operation and the first year of the conflict, marked by the development of transatlantic unity.
So why did President Macron need to revive this idea? On the one hand, the dialogue with the Russian Federation is now frankly not on the agenda of France, its support for Ukraine is unprecedented in the entire history of bilateral relations. However, in the Chinese direction, Macron's desire to distance himself from the United States and demonstrate his independence was more than openly manifested.
It is no coincidence that in the context of the visit it was repeatedly mentioned that it was President de Gaulle who in 1964 was the first among the major Western powers to recognize communist China, as opposed to Taiwan, and only a series of "small troubles", like the cultural revolution in China itself or the protests of 1968 in France itself, did not allow the French leader to be the first to visit The Celestial Empire. And thus France had to cede the palm to President Nixon and his adviser Kissinger, the architects of the policy of rapprochement between the United States and China.
Since then, almost every French president has tried on Gaullist shoes and tried to actively develop Franco-Chinese relations. And Macron himself spoke a few years ago about the need to visit China, at least every year, developing political and economic relations, exchanged visits with Xi in 2018-2019, presented the Chinese head with a thoroughbred horse and expensive wine.
In other words, we see an attempt to revive the traditional French policy of seventy years ago, and not its deep rethinking in the face of modern security problems.
Who outplayed whom?
Such an extravagant and risky step by the French president could be considered justified only if it led to a real correction of Beijing's foreign policy and was based on a pan-European consensus, and not on narrow national interests or personal beliefs. It is noteworthy that Politico stressed that it does not quote in its article those statements of the French president that were edited by the Elysee Palace after the fact.
Before the visit, Macron stated that China plays a key role in finding a path to peace in Ukraine and "we, the Europeans, should not make a mistake and allow Russia to be the only European (sic!) a state that has a dialogue with China." Tactically, Macron tried to separate the Ukrainian and Taiwanese directions of his policy, maintaining a hard discourse against the Russian Federation, but making curtsies to China.
What has been achieved?
In addition to vague hints from diplomatic sources that China has agreed to work together with France on a diplomatic solution to the "Ukrainian conflict," as success seems to be an extremely vague agreement of the Chinese leader to call Vladimir Zelensky. "During talks with Emmanuel Macron in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said he was ready to call his Ukrainian counterpart Vladimir Zelensky when the time came," writes Le Parisien.
The Chinese leader did not respond at all to Macron's calls not to supply weapons to the Russian Federation. The points in the joint declaration, which states support for "restoring peace in Ukraine on the basis of international law, the purposes and principles of the UN Charter," as well as the unacceptability of "attacks on nuclear power plants and support for the IAEA in its efforts to ensure the safety of the Zaporozhye NPP," China has declared before, including in the infamous twelve points on "solving the Ukrainian crisis". Moreover, as in this document, in the Franco-Chinese declaration, Russia's special operation is called the "Ukrainian conflict".
Therefore, Macron failed to achieve any concessions from China. But Chinese propaganda was able to claim that the first EU country publicly supported Chinese peace initiatives against Ukraine and it is possible to work with them. And in addition, Macron made a considerable gift to Beijing by signing a declaration on the development of cooperation in the military sphere. In Paris, they convince that this agreement has no special burden – the parties agreed to respect the "law of the sea" and no more. However, the symbolic significance of this declaration cannot be overestimated.
In a situation when the United States, France's NATO ally, is preparing to defend Taiwan in the event of Chinese aggression, Macron is agreeing to deepen cooperation between the Asia–Pacific Command of the French Naval Forces and the People's Liberation Army of China in the South China Sea, one of the main directions of expanding China's geopolitical ambitions. This looks like an outright demarche of Paris and a declaration of its non-interference in a potential conflict over Taiwan. Especially against the background of the parallel visit of the President of Taiwan to the United States and her meetings there with prominent American politicians.
It is not surprising that the very next day after the end of the visit of European leaders, China sent warships and aircraft to the demarcation line with Taiwan, once again demonstrating its readiness to resolve the Taiwan issue by force.
For Ukraine, such a policy of France to reduce dependence on the United States carries a number of hidden medium-term risks associated with the possible consequences of a violation of transatlantic unity for political and military support, as well as with the potential for increased pressure regarding negotiations with Russia at the wrong time and on not too favorable terms.
Authors: Nadezhda Koval, Yuri Panchenko
