As McCarthy Meets Leader of the Republic of China, Macron Meets With Xi

As Speaker McCarthy meets today with the president of the Republic of China, Tsai Ing-wen, President Macron of France is in Beijing attempting to woo the Chinese Communist Party boss. The schedules, while coincidental, are telling. What they tell is the tale of America and Europe as strange bedfellows — and on Communist China, perhaps, bedfellows no more.For it seems that France, like much of Western Europe, has chosen to align with President Xi’s vision of a new world order over the current American-led one. If Monsieur Macron is not careful, that could be the outcome of his trip. And among his fellow Europeans, there seems to be plenty of support for the idea.“I believe it is neither viable — nor in Europe’s interest — to decouple from China,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a speech at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies. “This is why we need to focus on de-risk — not de-couple.” Mrs. von der Leyen has traveled with Mr. Macron to Beijing in an ostensible show of European unity.Traveling with him, too, is a gaggle of French business leaders, including officials from Airbus and Alstom, which makes trains, as well as artists and filmmakers. They have come as if tributes in exchange for Mr. Xi’s assistance in resolving the war in Ukraine. Also on offer, it seems, is a European promise to resist calls from Washington for Europe to distance itself from Beijing.“China can play a major role” in finding a “pathway to peace,” Mr. Macron said upon his arrival at Beijing today.Mr. Xi could well prendre l’appât (take the bait, as we Yanks say), or at least feign doing so. For in soliciting Communist China’s help in negotiating with President Putin and mediating an ostensible peace, Mr. Macron has in effect offered to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s aim of the great Chinese rejuvenation.In this new era, China will have “moved toward center stage,” Mr. Xi said at the 19th National Party Congress. The center, no doubt, refers to the center of the international order. Should China be permitted to insert itself into Europe’s political affairs, it will have taken a decisive step in that direction.In the event, Mr. Putin would then also likely acquiesce to Beijing’s settlement demands, in the wider understanding that they would advance the global order that he and Mr. Xi seek.“Peace,” then, for the CCP does not mean what Mr. Macron thinks it does. It is, for Beijing, a rhetorical tool leveraged in pursuit of its geopolitical goals. Leveraged, in this case, to pose as a credible normative actor before existing and would-be allies — notably those in the global south whose views on the war diverge from the West’s — and to position itself as a necessary participant in the reconstruction of the postwar order.For China under Mr. Xi has long resented its exclusion from the post-World War II architecture. It has even gone so far as to rewrite its own history to assert its role as a forgotten, yet key, Allied force and a founding member of the post-1945 order. Why, then, pass up on the chance to assert itself now?“China stands ready to provide assistance and play a constructive role” in post-conflict reconstruction, the Chinese Communist Party’s position paper on Ukraine reads.It is difficult to imagine that this is what Mrs. von der Leyen had in mind when she urged Europe to “de-risk.” Perhaps Mr. Macron heard “re-risk.” Or perhaps Mr. Macron is well aware of, and little perturbed by, the likely consequences of inviting Communist China to meddle in European affairs.It could, after all, hasten his recent calls to “rethink the unity of our Europe and even the principles … to which we are all dedicated.” At minimum it could advance his idea of “strategic autonomy,” key to which is Europe’s splintering from America.While Mr. McCarthy meets with Ms. Tsai in a symbolic stand against communism, then, and in support of an American-led world order, Mr. Macron appears to be signaling his support for something different. His trip loosely reminds of a tributary state paying homage to its superior, with wealth, art, and flattery in tow. If this is not the vision that Mr. Macron intends, let him tread carefully, for it is the path upon which he is setting Europe.

As McCarthy Meets Leader of the Republic of China, Macron Meets With Xi

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