Unity, reality and reciprocity: Europe brings down the barriers for Xi Jinping in Paris
- European leaders strike united stand but also try to find common ground with Chinese president as the trading partners grapple with slowing growth
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s week-long Europe tour ended on a surprisingly positive note in Paris on Tuesday, with a rare show of unity between Beijing and Brussels despite a gathering storm in China-EU relations and pressure from the United States.
The trip, which also included stops in Italy and Monaco, was originally scheduled as part of a longer visit that would have culminated in Xi’s second summit with US President Donald Trump in Florida. But the Mar-a-Lago leg was cut as Chinese and American negotiators failed to iron out an agreement to end their months-long tariff war.
French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker jointly embarked on a charm offensive towards the Chinese leader on the final day of his visit.
Instead of focusing on grievances about Beijing’s unfair trade practices, unfulfilled promises of reform and oppressive domestic policies, the European leaders struck a conciliatory tone and made a joint effort to call for a more balanced, reciprocal relations with China.
They even praised Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative”, an infrastructure drive at the centre of Western countries’ wariness of China’s global ambitions, and chose global governance, one of Xi’s favourite topics, for the Tuesday summit at the Elysee Palace.
The unprecedented gathering, which Macron described as an effort to “establish a common definition for a new international order”, was supposed to deal with “challenges of multilateralism”, a veiled rebuke to Trump’s protectionist policies and his unilateral vision of the world.