[ad_1]
This article is also available in French.
French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on a plane that the country needs to reduce its dependence on the United States and avoid being embroiled in China-US confrontation over Taiwan. state visit to China.
After spending about six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Mr Macron spoke with POLITICO and two French journalists about a “strategic autonomy” for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a “third superpower”. emphasized his opinion.
He said the “great risk” facing Europe was that while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou in southern China aboard the French airline COTAM Unité, “we were caught up in a crisis that was not ours, and we were strategically challenged.” It prevents us from building autonomy,” said Force One.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party are ardent supporters of Macron’s concept of strategic autonomy, and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries. Communist Party leaders and theorists in Beijing believe that the West is declining, China is dominating, and weakening ties with the Atlantic Ocean will help accelerate this trend.
Mr Macron said in an interview, “The paradox would be to overcome panic and believe that we are only followers of the United States.” whether it is profitable or not. [a crisis] in Taiwan? No, the worse thing is to think that we Europeans have to become advocates for this topic and take cues from the US agenda and China’s overreaction,” he said.
Just hours after his plane left Guangzhou and returned to Paris, China began large-scale military exercises around the autonomous island of Taiwan.
The exercises were in response to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen’s 10-day diplomatic tour to Central America, which included a meeting with Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in transit in California. People familiar with Macron’s thinking said they were pleased that Beijing had at least waited until he was out of Chinese airspace before launching a simulated “Taiwan encirclement” exercise.
Beijing, which has repeatedly threatened invasion in recent years, has pursued a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of “one China.”
Taiwan talks
A French official who accompanied the president said Macron and President Xi Jinping had “enthusiastic” discussions about Taiwan.
“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is paramount,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied part of President Macron’s visit, told President Xi Jinping at a meeting in Beijing last Thursday. I told you I told you “threat [of] The use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable. ”
Xi replied that anyone who thinks China can influence Taiwan is deluded.
Macron seems to agree with that assessment.
“Europe cannot solve the crisis in Ukraine. , that’s how it is,” he said.
“Europe is becoming more receptive to a world where China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yangmei Xie, geopolitical analyst at Gavekar Dragonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe that such a world order might be more advantageous for Europe.”
At the trilateral meeting with Macron and von der Leyen in Beijing last Thursday, Xi Jinping fell off the script on just two topics: Ukraine and Taiwan.
“President Xi is clearly angry at being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” the person said. “He was clearly furious with the United States, over Taiwan, the passing of the Taiwanese president through the United States, and [the fact that] Foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans. ”
At the meeting, Macron and von der Leyen expressed similar views on Taiwan, the person said. But Mr Macron then spent more than four hours of his time with the Chinese leader, mostly as an interpreter only. His tone when speaking to journalists was much more conciliatory than that of Von Der his Leyen.
“Vassal” warning
President Macron also argued that Europe is becoming more dependent on the United States for weapons and energy and that now it must focus on boosting Europe’s defense industry.
He also suggested that Europe should reduce its reliance on “US dollar extraterritoriality”, a key policy goal of both Moscow and Beijing.
“As tensions between the two superpowers escalate, they will have neither the time nor the resources to fund strategic autonomy and will become subject states,” he said.
Russia, China, Iran and other countries have been hit in recent years by US sanctions based on denying them access to the dominant dollar-denominated global financial system. Some in Europe are complaining about Washington’s “weaponization” of the dollar that will force European companies to abandon operations and cut ties with third countries, or lead to catastrophic changes. You will face secondary sanctions.
President Macron claimed that he had “won the ideological battle for strategic autonomy” in Europe while sitting in the cabin of an A330 aircraft wearing a hoodie emblazoned with “French Tech” across his chest.
He did not address the issue of continued American security guarantees to a continent that relies heavily on American defense support in the first major land battle in Europe since World War II.
As one of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France is in a unique military position. However, Ukraine’s contribution to defense against Russian aggression is much less than that of many other countries.
As is common in France and many other European countries, the French presidential office, known as the Élysée Palace, checks all presidential citations published in this article as a condition of allowing interviews. I insisted on “proofreading”. This violates POLITICO’s editorial standards and policies, but I agreed to the terms to speak directly with the President of France. POLITICO claimed that it could not deceive its readers and would not publish anything the president did not say. All the quotes in this article are what the president actually said, but part of the interview where the president spoke more candidly about the strategic autonomy of Taiwan and Europe was cut out by Elise.
[ad_2]
Source link
