Editorial | Xi mission to Europe shows engaging with China has its benefits
- Chinese president did not avoid difficult questions from his French and EU counterparts, and visits to Serbia and Hungary reinforced established ties
Highlights of President Xi Jinping’s first trip to Europe in five years were meetings with the presidents of France and the European Commission, Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen. Important trade issues and the Russia-Ukraine war gave them plenty to talk about.
With the main events over, it is not surprising that Xi’s homeward-bound stops in Serbia and Hungary prompted questions, especially in the West, why he bothered with relatively unimportant small countries, even if they are friendly to Beijing.
The reason was not to avoid difficult questions elsewhere, as some suggested. In any case, the issues that roil China and European Union relations, from China’s support for Russia to trade imbalances, and the alleged subsidised overcapacity of products such as electric vehicles, had already been the subject of frank exchanges in Paris.
If they did not resolve differences, they should have left little unsaid.
The real reason arises from Beijing’s understanding that, amid tensions, a question often raised is what is the point, what is the benefit of engaging more closely with China?