Emmanuel Macron likes to portray France as a “balancing power” in world affairs and a leader in a united EU’s diplomacy. His visit to Beijing this week is very much in that spirit. Ostensibly and primarily it is about persuading China’s president Xi Jinping to engage to end Russia’s Ukraine war. But the subtexts are broader. They include French trade – he has brought around 50 business executives – and, crucially, redefining France’s, and the EU’s, longer-term relationship with Beijing. It is a choice characterised by analysts as one between “de-risking” and the more antagonistic “decoupling” that the US administration prefers.
Macron insists Europe needs to be able to assert its interests and not let Beijing divide and rule the EU. Germany, Spain and Hungary tend to see China through a business lens, while some other states are more hawkish and sympathetic to the US position.
The US message to Brussels, reports say, has been that Europe should not make the same mistakes as it did with Russia, by building up economic dependencies on a war-mongering partner. Senior officials at the European Council, however appear to be pushing for a less confrontational approach to Beijing, fearful of being dragged into a possible conflict between China and the US.
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen is in Beijing too, broadly reinforcing the same messages as Macron in joint and separate meetings with the Chinese leadership. She has made clear the immediate and long-term challenges in developing the relationship. Beijing’s willingness to back Russia in Ukraine will be a “determining factor” in EU-China relations for years to come. She stressed the need to “de-risk not decouple.” Europe still needs and wants to do business with China.
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EU attitudes to China have hardened over the last few years due to its unfair trade and restrictive investment practices, its coercive diplomacy and its human rights abuses. It treats China first of all as a systemic rival, adopting policies to mitigate the risks. “De-risking” means identifying vulnerabilities and protecting the union, while continuing to trade.
Macron’s advisers say that the president sees China as the only country capable of having a “radical and immediate impact” on the Ukraine conflict and that the Chinese view of the war has yet definitively to crystalise. That should allow France space to prise it away from Russia, the French say, specifically on the delivery of weapons. As yet Beijing has not been prepared to send weapons to support Russia’s war efforts.
Macron’s challenge will be to convince Xi that China has more to gain economically and politically by strengthening its links with the dynamic and wealthy markets of Europe, rather than with a failing autocrat in Moscow.