“I think China is coming to the same conclusion as we are, that today is military time. The Ukrainians are resisting and we are helping them. This is not the time for negotiations, even if we prepare them and if we have to lie about the basics. That is the goal of this dialogue with China: to consolidate common approaches.” This was stated by the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron, after his visit to China and his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in an interview with “Les Echos”.
For Macron, these approaches “must include support for the principles of the United Nations Charter; a clear reminder of nuclear power and it is up to China to take the consequences of the days ago Russian President Vladimir Putin stationed nuclear weapons in Belarus after promising not to do so; a very strong reminder of international humanitarian law and the protection of children; the desire for a negotiated and lasting peace”.
“I observe – emphasizes Macron – that President Xi Jinping spoke about the European security architecture. But there can be no European security architecture as long as there are countries under attack or frozen conflicts in Europe. So you can see that a common matrix emerges from all of this. Is Ukraine a priority for Chinese diplomacy? Maybe not. But this dialogue allows us to soften the comments we’ve heard about a form of complacency on the part of China towards Russia.”
EUROPE – “Strategic autonomy must be Europe’s struggle. We do not want to make ourselves dependent on others when it comes to relevant issues. The day you have no choice, what energy, how to defend yourself, social media, artificial intelligence, why don’t we have more? Infrastructure on these issues, we risk disappearing from history for quite a while,” says Macron in an interview with ‘Les Echos’. Five years ago, according to the French leader, “strategic autonomy was a chimera. Today it is in everyone is talking about it. It is an important change. We have equipped ourselves with defense and industrial policy tools, we have started to build factories for batteries, hydrogen and electronic components. And we have equipped ourselves with defense tools only three or four years ago, those of the European ideology completely oppose it! Now we have very effective protection tools,” notes Macron.
For the French President, strategic autonomy is crucial to prevent EU states from becoming ‘vassals’: ‘The trap for Europe would be that while it clarifies its strategic position, while it compared to the pre-Covid period becomes more strategically autonomous, finds itself confronted with a changing world and confronted with crises that are not ours. If there is an acceleration of the conflagration of the duopoly (China and USA, n.m. strategic autonomy and we become vassals while we are the third pole can be if we have a few years to build it up”.