The president of the rising great power, Xi Jinping, has not set foot in the European Union for no less than five years. An anomaly attributable only in part to covid and that will be resolved this Sunday with his landing in Paris. Beijing diplomacy confirmed today that, after his visit to France, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China will continue his trip to Serbia and Hungary.
A selection of destinations that may seem capricious, but it is not. Xi Jinping returns the visit a year ago by his counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, with the added excuse of the 60th anniversary of the establishment of relations between the People’s Republic of China and the French Republic. Although Macron is not De Gaulle, during his visit to Beijing and Canton he defended the “strategic autonomy” of Europe, without which, according to him, the continent “risks leaving history.”
Xi’s visit to the Serbian president, Aleksandar Vucic, and the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, responds to their participation in last October’s meeting in Beijing, around the New Silk Roads. One of his stellar projects in Europe is, precisely, the high-speed train between Belgrade and Budapest.
Beyond the infrastructure, the populist Orbán – who maintains excellent relations with Vladimir Putin and Beniamin Netanyahu – is a free electron in the EU, without the slightest enthusiasm for prolonging the war in Ukraine and who also delayed entry as much as he could. of Sweden in NATO. If Viktor Orbán is considered the most pro-Chinese of the EU leaders, Vucic, for his part, leads the most pro-Russian of the European nations. China has also not forgotten the bombing of its embassy in Belgrade by NATO forces a century ago. Last year, with great secrecy, Beijing sold anti-aircraft batteries to the Serbian army.
Xi Jinping’s European tour, until May 10, will largely revolve around the invasions of Ukraine and Palestine. Both China and France support efforts to bring peace to the former Soviet republic that will take place in Switzerland during the month of June. Although China does not recognize the border changes that Moscow is imposing by force of arms, it has not condemned its “special operation” either. A year ago, Xi and Putin staged their “limits alliance” in Moscow and the Russian president is scheduled to return the visit this May.
Trade disputes with the EU have soured relations, as Paris backed a European Commission anti-subsidy investigation into Chinese imports of electric vehicles. China then launched an anti-dumping investigation into cognac.
However, behind the scenes, France hopes to close a significant sale of Airbus to China, which has just presented its own passenger air transport alternative with which it plans to compete in the not too distant future with the duopoly of the European giant and its rival. American, Boeing.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has said that the international community hopes “that China and France will speak with the same voice on issues relating to world stability and peace and the future of humanity.” Wang does not hide his hope that “France will push the EU to adopt a positive and pragmatic stance towards China.”
In fact, Beijing was confident that Brexit would improve its understanding with Brussels, something that is far from having occurred, despite the growing concern of the German industry. In any case, the upcoming visit indicates that China will continue playing its cards in order to separate continental Europe from the path of confrontation set by London and Washington.
As proof of the latter, there is the visit of the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, last week to Shanghai and Beijing, where he was received – and fired – with minimal protocol. The same Friday that Blinken met with Xi, China launched a manned rocket to its space station and sent its Defense Minister, Dong Ju, to Kazakhstan, to meet with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Shoigu. The day before, the defense ministries of France and China had signed a framework document to improve their maritime and air cooperation.
During Xi Jinping’s European tour at the end of 2018, he met with President Pedro Sánchez and Felipe VI, while receiving the Golden Key of Madrid from the then mayor, Manuela Carmena. In Lisbon shortly afterward, the Chinese president laid a wreath at the tomb of the poet Luis de Camoes, who lived in Macau three centuries before the British took Hong Kong by force.
This time, Emmanuel Macron has decided to take Xi Jinping on an excursion to the mountains, to Bagnères-de-Bigorres. But it is on the other side of the Pyrenees, in the old Nissan facilities in the Barcelona Free Trade Zone, where this same month the news broke that the Chinese electric car manufacturer, Chery – together with the resurrected Ebro – was going to invest hundreds of millions of euros. China does not give stitches without thread.
