Xi Jinping’s visit to France, the first and most important leg of his five-day trip to Europe, ended with a joint declaration with Emmanuel Macron on the Middle East and a number of business deals with French companies. Macron pressed him to use his influence with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine, and Ursula von der Leyen raised the European Union’s concerns over Chinese factories producing too many goods.
In 2019, when Xi last visited the Elysee, he heard similar complaints about the trade imbalance from Macron, German chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. And the Chinese leader issued some of the same bromides about Beijing’s commitment to a multipolar world and how China and the EU should advance together.
Five years ago the four leaders held a joint press conference, something unimaginable today, partly because Xi has become a more remote figure since then, even in China. When he held a joint press event with five leaders from Central Asia last year, he was the only one to speak, reading out a statement and taking no questions from reporters.
It was in 2019 that the EU devised the so-called triptych that defined China as a partner for co-operation, an economic competitor and a systemic rival. The following year the coronavirus pandemic and China’s secretive response fuelled European doubts about Beijing as a partner.
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The next three years, when China’s zero-Covid policy effectively closed its borders and the country’s leadership avoided all non-digital contact with the rest of the world, mutual mistrust deepened. Beijing’s response to diplomatic slights became more thin-skinned and its sanctioning of MEPs in 2021 backfired when the European Parliament refused to ratify a trade and investment deal that had been seven years in the making.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and Beijing’s economic and diplomatic support for Moscow has damaged China’s relationship with the EU more than anything else. Macron said that Xi made a commitment on Monday not to sell weapons to Russia and to “closely control the export of dual-usage equipment”.
Xi said that China had no part in the war and warned against using the crisis to “throw the responsibility on a third party, and call for a new Cold War”. He made no public commitment to take part in next month’s peace conference in Switzerland, to which Russia has not been invited, but joined Macron in calling for a truce in all conflicts for the Olympic Games, which starts at the end of July.
Xi will have an opportunity to persuade Putin of the need for an Olympic truce when he hosts him in Beijing later this month. But China will not abandon Russia for the sake of its relationship with the EU, and for Beijing any negotiated settlement in Ukraine must take account of Moscow’s security interests.
Xi’s visit to Serbia, the second leg of his European trip, coincides with the 25th anniversary of Nato’s bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade which killed three journalists. In a statement before he left France, Xi said that China should never forget the “flagrant” bombing, and issued a warning to those in Nato with ambitions to extend its reach into Asia. “The Chinese people cherish peace, but we will never allow such tragic history to repeat itself,” he said.
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