French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen are set to arrive in China on Wednesday for a three-day state visit that will see them meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, reported Al Jazeera.
Macron and US President Joe Biden agreed in a telephone call ahead of the French leader’s trip to engage China to hasten the end of the war in Ukraine, the Elysee Palace said on Wednesday.
“The two leaders have mentioned their joint willingness to engage China to accelerate the end of the war in Ukraine and take part in building sustainable peace in the region,” Macron’s office said in a statement.
Macron is determined to carve out a distinct role for Europe that avoids America’s confrontation with an assertive China, and convinced that there is a place for China in ending the war in Ukraine.
Macron will be accompanied by a delegation of more than 50 CEOs and meet with the French business community, but all eyes will be on how he and von der Leyen discuss the war in Ukraine with the Chinese leadership, reported Al Jazeera.
Meanwhile von der Leyen during a speech in Brussels last week publicly criticised Beijing’s “no limits” ties with Moscow in the face of an “atrocious and illegal invasion of Ukraine”.
“Any peace plan which would in effect consolidate Russian annexations is simply not a viable plan. We have to be frank on this point,” von der Leyen said, while also taking aim at China’s increasingly assertive posture on the South China Sea, the Chinese-Indian border and Taiwan, reported Al Jazeera.
“How China continues to interact with Putin’s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward,” she said.
Beijing said it was “disappointed” by her speech, according to its European Union ambassador Fu Cong.
China has so far not condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has avoided use of the word “war” to describe the Russian assault.
It has embraced a “no-limits,” anti-Western partnership with Moscow, cemented last month by President Xi Jinping’s visit to Russia and the joint declaration of a “new era” freed of what the two countries see as American dominance, reported The New York Times (NYT).
