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Can you continue to ship sturdy messages when you could have rolled out the crimson carpet and chilled the champagne for a state dinner? China’s Xi Jinping feted within the French capital for his first go to to Europe since 2019, this regardless of commerce tensions, spy scandals and insistence that he isolate Vladimir Putin over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. How a lot has modified since a yr in the past when Emmanuel Macron was accused of lax messaging on human rights and Taiwan when he traveled to Beijing?
The final time Macron hosted Xi, he invited then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel to hitch the talks alongside the European Commission president. This time, Ursula von der Leyen’s in Paris, however no Olaf Scholz. We will ask why and whether or not that strengthens or weakens the bargaining place of France and the EU.
And then there are the messages Xi desires to convey, significantly along with his itinerary: after France, the Chinese president travels to Hungary, whose lenient stance in the direction of Beijing’s being rewarded with an electrical car manufacturing facility and Serbia for the twenty fifth anniversary of Nato’s mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade through the struggle in Kosovo. Part of the exhausting discount or a sign that China is able to tackle all comers?
Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Rebecca Gnignati and Juliette Brown.
https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/the-debate/20240506-red-carpet-diplomacy-what-s-macron-message-for-china-s-xi