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French President Emmanuel Macron is visiting China with a delegation of about
50 corporate CEOs to boost bilateral investment and trade ties. He also hopes
that China can "play a major role" in bringing an end to the Russia-Ukraine
conflict. Unlike some European states which blindly follow the United States, France is
known for its more independent foreign policy, as in the case of its opposition
to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Compared to the US, NATO and EU leaders, Macron has spoken more positively of
China's 12-point position document to end the Ukraine crisis and said on
Wednesday that it shows China wants to "build a pathway toward peace". For decades, China has maintained friendly relations with both Russia and
Ukraine. In the past year, it has kept urging de-escalation and diplomatic
solutions to end the conflict and refrained from adding fuel to the fire. The fact that more than 150 countries have refused to join the West's
sanctions against Russia shows that the vast majority of nations want the
conflict to end as soon as possible. However, it is hard to say whether some Western leaders want China to
successfully play a more constructive role in promoting peace and end the
conflict, since it would steal their limelight and undermine their goal of
"weakening Russia" by exploiting the conflict and "fighting to the last
Ukrainian". The fact that the US, NATO and EU leaders didn't even acknowledge China's
role in successfully mediating a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia
recently reflected the same narrow-minded thinking. Macron is the only EU leader who has called for providing Russia with a
security guarantee to end the conflict, but his words have not only failed to
convince anyone in Washington or Brussels but also drawn fire across Europe. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who is accompanying
Macron on his China visit, is a more hawkish figure in pushing for escalation of
the conflict. Like NATO and the US, the EU has not put forward any meaningful diplomatic
plan to end the conflict, a plan that would address both Ukraine and Russia's
concerns. On the other hand, von der Leyen's speech last week on the EU's China policy
shows her serious lack of understanding of today's China. The blind finger
pointing at the South China Sea, the Taiwan Straits and at China's domestic and
foreign policy grossly distorted facts and only mimicked Washington's anti-China
rhetoric. It is good for her to state clearly that "it is neither viable, nor in
Europe's interest, to decouple from China," but her emphasis on "de-risk" is
deeply flawed because such a move will erode mutual trust and therefore increase
risks instead of reducing them. The fact that China and the EU are each other's major trade partner means
that they are highly dependent on each other and that is a good thing. When von der Leyen meets representatives of the EU Chamber of Commerce in
China, they might tell her that EU businesses have participated in many critical
infrastructure projects in China and China welcomed them instead of
scaremongering about them. They should tell her that the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment
whose negotiation was concluded in December of 2020 would bring many one-sided
benefits to EU investors, so freezing the ratification or reassessing the
agreement as von der Leyen called for in her speech last week will only
undermine the interests of EU businesses. Bilateral investment and trade is a win-win for both sides and it is wrong
for some EU leaders to think they are doing a favor or charity for China. The author is chief of China Daily EU Bureau based in Brussels.
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