President Emmanuel Macron was welcomed by Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, after arriving in Beijing last week.Pool photo by Ng Han Guan
Macron returns from China
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has returned from a three-day visit to China in which he sought to further his ambitions for France in a world changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s emergence as an arbiter of global conflict.
His reception on returning to Europe has been chilly. In France, he faces weekly protests in the streets; in diplomatic circles, he now finds himself excoriated abroad for what have been criticized as naïve attempts to sway first Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, and now Xi Jinping, China’s top leader. The French president is now more isolated than ever.
Macron has unsettled allies from Warsaw to Washington with his embrace of what a Sino-French declaration called a “global strategic partnership with China.” And his comments on the security of Taiwan, which he suggested was not Europe’s problem, have caused further consternation.
Follow-up: Yesterday, the Élysée Palace, home to the president, felt it necessary to clarify France’s allegiances, so muddied had the optics become. France, it said, “is not equidistant between the U.S. and China. The U.S. is our ally, with shared values.”
