/ world today news/ Beijing invited Paris to prove its independence in foreign policy
The visit of the President of France and the head of the European Commission to Beijing was a failure in terms of the stated objectives. Worse still, Ursula von der Leyen was met with marked coolness as an avowed servant of the US. But the Chinese continue to hope for Emmanuel Macron. As Russian practice shows – in vain.
Try as they might, the administrations of Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen will remember only the table from their trip to Beijing. A huge round table at which, at a considerable distance from each other, they negotiated with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
At first glance – nothing special. We got used to the anti-virus measures, in China they were one of the strictest and they have not been completely lifted yet. But on the same day, Xi spent a lot of time and was clearly not afraid to pick up the French strain in close proximity to Macron.
The world press began to pay attention to the length and width of the furniture during the negotiations thanks to Russian President Vladimir Putin. There was such a period of the pandemic, which coincided with a sharp cooling of relations with the West, when he received guests from the NATO countries sitting at the other end of the table, and the leaders of neutral countries and allies – as usual.
Officially, this was explained by the reluctance of the Western guests to take the Russian PCR test, apparently now they will explain it with something else. They will not say directly that their comrade is leaving Europe. However, they recently negotiated with Putin at the “allied” table. And it was with Putin that the guests from Europe openly invited him to fight – “to pressure him”, “to reason with him”, “to influence him” and so on, in order to achieve what they themselves did not achieve with threats, sanctions, weapons and other methods.
However, even the American media, which openly supported “their own”, noted the failure of Macron’s efforts and noticed signs of irritation in Xi. From the French president’s rants, the Chinese president sighed heavily at times, but he did not reveal any negative attitude towards Russia. It was as if he was not interested in Russia at all: in Beijing they think first of all about their own interests, unlike the European Union.
True, Comrade Xi still promised to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This has already become a self-sufficient mission for the envoys of the NATO countries, and it seems quite amusing, since the issue is of little importance (Zelensky is hardly more convincing than Macron).
And now: he will definitely call, you see, when circumstances arise for it. Someday they will definitely arise. In Russia itself, negotiations with Kiev are scheduled for exactly the same period – “when the circumstances arise.”
However, one day he will still call – China clearly claims to be a peacemaker in our conflict, and this requires communication with both sides. But in the end, it’s not about Zelensky, it’s about the fact that the Europeans literally asked for a blow – and they got it.
The situation was formulated most succinctly by the Chinese ambassador to the Russian Federation, Zhang Hanhui, in an interview with “Izvestia”: “The West is not in a position to give instructions to China, and even more so – it does not have the authority to place responsibility on it. “
Another thing is that in the case of Macron in particular, one should not exaggerate. To him and to Von der Leyen (who attended this event at the request of the Frenchman and was supposed to symbolize the “unity of the position of Europe”) the host showed a different attitude. There were no heavy sighs, there was obvious disdain.
If the President of France in China has a busy schedule and the opportunity to “breathe the same air” with his comrade, the head of the European Commission was walking restlessly, giving press conferences at the EU Delegation in Beijing.
The explanation is simple: China is interested in France as a rich and developed trade-economic partner. And the European Union is perceived there as an organization created to strengthen the positions of the USA. The Chinese press writes about this regularly and directly, including in connection with the past negotiations.
That is why Macron is being given a chance. It will not affect Beijing’s relations with other countries, and especially with Russia (the Chinese are already tired of explaining that this is not only unacceptable, but also unthinkable). But it is possible to realize narrow French economic interests if China’s interests are also taken into account.
China’s interests are actually a test of whether France is a subject. Because taking into account the interests of China and generally cooperating with it is possible only if the interest of the United States is ignored. If containing the PRC is an openly declared priority for Washington, then partnership with China requires political independence.
It does not exist in the EU. If Beijing had any doubts about this, they have been dispelled over the past year. The Chinese see the Europeans disarming their own armies in favor of the Armed Forces, spending billions on Ukraine, suffering lost profits due to the severance of relations with Russia. They also see that US energy companies are only profiting from this situation.
For Xi, the Brussels bureaucracy is only a pillar of the “Pax Americana” to which China is gradually moving. He demonstrated to the world that partnering with Washington meant abandoning national interests, but partnering with Beijing did not. That the US is a party to numerous conflicts around the world, and China has consistently been a neutral country and a supporter of peace talks. Among those fed up with America’s destructive foreign policy dictatorship, China’s position cannot fail to evoke sympathy (with all its claims on the PRC on other issues).
But France, according to Reuters, the Chinese leader considers one of his likely allies in Europe. He also hopes to draw her closer to him—and away from the United States. And formally there are grounds for this.
This is the French potential – economic, military with bases in four oceans. These are French ambitions, multiplied by Macron’s vigor and his resentment of the Anglo-Saxons. This is French history, in which there were real attempts at an independent life – without America (remember, for example, the demonstrative exit of Charles de Gaulle from the military part of NATO).
But in reality, comrade Xi’s hopes run the risk of being as ill-founded as Macron’s hopes of bridging Moscow and Beijing. All the energy of the Frenchman goes to the wind that is being blown by the President Joe Biden. In the past year, the Russian leadership was constantly convinced of this, although before that the French president was separated from the common European ranks. In Russia, we hoped for the same thing that the Chinese now hope for – the independence of Paris in foreign policy.
As one Soviet joke on a similar theme says, “The whole system needs to be changed here.” This is exactly what the Chinese started at the world level. And if they are not specifically provoked, they will not rush. It is believed that they know how to wait better than anyone else in the world, which means that they will wait – if not the fall of America, then at least the enlightenment of Europe.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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