The ‘dry residue’ from Macron’s visit to China
Sometimes it pays to hold your fire, to allow leaders in the mainstream in the West, in Russia and elsewhere step forward first with their appraisals of important events like Macron’s visit to China last week before setting out an independent opinion for dissemination via alternative media. In this regard, I am pleased to have benefited from reports in The Financial Times, in Figaro, Le Monde and Les Echos, on the website Politico.eu and on the Russian news and analysis programs Sixty Minutes and Evening with Vladimir Solovyov before sitting down to write about what I would call the ‘dry residue’ from Macron’s joint visit to China last week in the company of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Let us recall that on the eve of this visit The Financial Times, Euronews, the BBC and other mainstream Western media all directed attention to just one aspect of the forthcoming summit: what Macron and von der Leyen would be saying to President Xi. Put succinctly, this was to urge the Chinese to apply pressure on the Kremlin and bring the Russians to the peace table on Kiev’s terms. There was the further point by von der Leyen speaking to reporters before the trip: to warn the Chinese against sending arms to Russia lest they face “consequences” in damaged relations with the European Union. As a brief coda to FT coverage ahead of the visit, we were told that there were a number of “business leaders” traveling with Macron, though there was no indication of what, if anything, they would be doing.
The first news out of mainstream media as the visit of Macron and von der Leyen ended was that the Chinese gave a very reserved answer to the gratuitous advice from the European visitors. Xi is said to have smiled politely in answer to the request to intervene with the Russians and so to participate more actively in brokering peace. Von der Leyen told journalists before leaving Beijing that Xi had heard out her suggestion that he pick up the phone and speak to Zelensky. But, she noted, his response was that he would do so only when the time was appropriate.
However, already on the 7th, the FT appeared to concede that China might also have had agency in the relationship with the European visitors. We see this in an article entitled “Tea with Xi: Macron gets personal touch as China visit highlights EU differences.” See the following excerpt:
Macron, who was accompanied to China by dozens of French business leaders, was joined for part of his three-day visit by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen in a gesture of common European purpose towards Beijing. Yet any sense of unity was undercut by arrangements that flattered the French leader with a banquet, military parade and other trappings of a state visit, while von der Leyen was excluded from several of the lavish events.
What this meant in practice is set out in a quote from John Delury, a China expert with Yonsei University in Seoul:
‘Xi’s strategy is: Macron is coming with his hands outstretched so they’re embracing him; [von der Leyen] is articulating the harder European position, and they’re trying to put her out at the margins,’ he said.
In the same 7 April issue of The Financial Times, we find an Opinion article by Sylvie Kauffmann, editorial director of Le Monde, entitled tantalizingly “Europe is feeling its way towards a new relationship with China.” The most valuable contribution in the article may be its final two paragraphs:
The EU is now building tools to protect itself from foreign interference. It is also learning to behave like a world power. Von der Leyen and Macron’s tough words in Beijing may have surprised the Chinese leadership.
Yet Macron had more than 50 chief executives travelling with him. And China is the EU’s largest trading partner. A more assertive China and a more assertive Europe are now trying to find common ground in a world where geopolitical realities clash with economic interests.
Of course, in the body of her article Kauffmann gave us not a word about what those 50 CEO’s may have achieved in China or what common ground China and the EU may settle upon. However, as someone who has followed Kauffmann over time, I think the elegant vacuousness of her writing may be what makes it so attractive to the FT today as it was in the past to The International Herald Tribune. Back in 2013, I did a critique of her article in the IHT that bears a title which seems particularly piquant today: “How Europe Can Help Kiev.” My opening remarks said it all:
Kauffmann’s op-ed essay shows that she deals in platitudes and makes fool-hardy mistakes of fact and interpretation which, due to her august position in mainstream media, few if any call out.
For those who wish to pursue the issue of Kauffmann’s intellectual laziness that explains this vacuousness, I refer you to my collection of essays Does Russia Have a Future? (2015) p. 91 ff.
So, the FT, a major source of business information to a global audience, has given its readers absolutely no information about the business side of the French delegation’s visit to China. This is extraordinary since CEOs never travel on state visits of their presidents to do negotiating on the spot. They come to sign contracts or letters of intent that have been prepared well in advance by their top headquarters executives and country managers. That is the scenario I saw time and again when I attended Russian-U.S. summits during my days as a consultant to the boards of directors of several major international corporations. Therefore, I surmise that the French have done a magnificent job concealing from public view the business they may have concluded in Beijing, this to avoid censure from the other 27 EU member states, many of whom are surely very jealous of possible French successes in these times of sanctions on Russia and threat of secondary sanctions on Russia’s friends.
In a moment, I will take a look at the interesting news item that yesterday shook Western media commentators, and presumably their audiences as well: the interview which Emmanuel Macron gave to to reporters from Politico.eu and Les Echos. But first I want to direct attention to how Russian state television presented the Macron visit to China to its domestic audience. From start to finish.
The outstanding difference is that the leading Russian political talk shows, Sixty Minutes and Evening with Vladimir Solovyov, which mix presentation of video taken from mostly Western mainstream media and commentary from expert panelists, gave the floor to professional Sinologists. Among them was one stand-out: Nikolai Nikolaevich Vavilov. Thirty-eight year old Vavilov has come into his own as an authority ready to convey to television audiences what the Chinese are messaging both in words and by body language with reference to the traditional culture of the Middle Kingdom. Even the overbearing television host Solovyov fell silent and let Vavilov do the talking.
It bears mention that Vavilov is a graduate of St Petersburg State University. His website informs us that over the course of ten years he studied and worked in various regions of China. During his university years already he was sent to China by his faculty adviser to participate in a state-to-state scholarly exchange. From 2008 to 2013, he worked for Russian trading and manufacturing companies in three Chinese provinces. From 2013 to 2015, he was employed in the Chinese state information agency Xinhua. He is the author of two Russian-language books, Uncrowned kings of Red China (2016) and The Chinese Authorities (2021).
And what was Vavilov saying on Russian television about the Macron visit? First, in contrast with Western news reports, from even before Macron landed in Beijing, Vavilov explained that the Chinese allowed the trip to go forward, despite the publicly stated intentions of the visitors to lecture him, which is deeply offensive and brings up bitter memories of 19th century colonial overlordship, because China had its own plans for the outcome. These were to remind France of the economic benefits of remaining politically friendly with Beijing and to lock in major projects with leading French corporations that can bring important new technologies to China.
Vavilov also pointed out that Macron’s publicized phone conversation with Joe Biden before he flew off to Beijing made him look like a puppet of Washington to his Chinese hosts. Their highest priority would be to break that relationship.
As the visit progressed, Vavilov and others provided relevant details of the differentiated receptions accorded to Macron and to von der Leyen. We learned to our surprise that von der Leyen did not travel to China on Macron’s jet. Instead, she arrived on a commercial flight. Upon arrival, no red carpet was laid down for her, there was no military honor guard and senior Chinese official there to meet her. She simply got the standard VIP treatment inside the arrivals hall. When Xi received Macron and von der Leyen together for joint talks, they were seated at a very big round table several meters apart. This was similar to the arrangements that Vladimir Putin had put in place for his meetings with Scholz and others in Moscow during the peak of the Covid crisis. However, China has put Covid behind it and the special distance of seating at the meeting was to underline the political distance of the parties, especially that of von der Leyen.
No detail was too small to escape comment by the Russian experts. The unusual blue color of the cloth covering the meeting table was said to be meant either as a reference to the blue background of the flag of the European Union, which hung by the wall, or as a reference to a state of mourning, since blue is the fabric bound to the coffins of the deceased in China for the burial ceremony.
At the same time, it bears mention that the Russia media had not a word to say about any business agreements that may have been concluded by the French delegation. The wall of silence on this matter seems to have been very effective indeed.
Von der Leyen was dealt a very meager agenda during her stay in Beijing. She was excluded from the big banquets and other major events of the state visit by Macron. None of this could have escaped the attention of the business delegation or of the French and other foreign journalists who covered the visit. In brief, she was cut down to size.
The proof that China had its own agenda for the state visit by Macron and largely succeeded, whereas the visitors’ political agenda failed, came yesterday with publication of an interview which Emmanuel Macron gave to Politico and Les Echos over the course of two flights on France’s Air Force One. One flight leg was from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China. The other was on the return flight to Paris.
See: https//www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-china-america-pressure-interview/ and Emmanuel Macron : « L'autonomie stratégique doit être le combat de l'Europe »
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Comparing the two publications, the article in Les Echos is more substantial. However, I will use the English text of Politico as the base material below.
Given their advance preparation for this denouement of the visit, Russian media took in stride what Macron told reporters, whereas Western media are still reverberating from the shock that Macron delivered in the informal meeting with journalists.
“Europe must resist pressure to become ‘America’s followers,’ says Macron. The ‘great risk’ Europe faces is getting ‘caught up in crises that are not ours,’ French president says in interview.” This is the headline and subtitle that Politico assigned to its summary of the interview.
They quote Macron in greater length as regards the ‘crisis’ he had in mind:
The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers. The question Europeans need to answer…is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction…
In another part of their text, Politico summarized several key points from Macron’s remarks to them that bear mention here:
Macron also argued that Europe had increased its dependency on the U.S. for weapons and energy and must now focus on boosting European defense industries.
He also suggested Europe should reduce its dependence on the ‘extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,’ a key policy objective of both Moscow and Beijing.
‘If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up…we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,’ he said.
In an aside to readers at the end of the article, Politico explains that the Elysée Palace had insisted on the right to ‘proofread’ all the president’s quotes that they would publish as a condition for granting the interview. They obliged but, as we read here: “The quotes in this article were all actually said by the president, but some parts of the interview in which the president spoke even more frankly about Taiwan and Europe’s strategic autonomy were cut out by the Elysée.”
Looking at the more extensive article in Les Echos, I call attention to the quite important statements attributed to Macron as regards Europe’s strategic autonomy:
The paradox is that the American grip on Europe is stronger than ever…
We certainly have increased our dependence vis-à-vis the United States in the domain of energy, but it is in the logic of diversification, because we were much too dependent on Russian gas. Today, the fact is that we depend more on the United States, on Qatar and on others. But this diversification was necessary.
As for the rest, you have to take into account the redesign effects. For too long Europe did not build the strategic autonomy for which I have been fighting. Now the ideological battle has been won and the fundamentals have been laid down. There is a price to pay for that, and that is normal. It is like for the French reindustrialization: we have won the ideological battle, we have carried out the reforms, they are tough, and we are beginning to see the results of this but at the same time, we are paying for the broken pottery of what we did not do for twenty years. That’s politics! You have to stay the course.
To this I would add one more quote from Macron in Les Echos that is relevant to today’s discussion:
Is Joe Biden just a more polite version of Donald Trump?
He is attached to democracy, to the fundamental principles, to the international logic; and he knows and loves Europe. All of this is essential. On the other hand, he fits into the American bipartisan logic which defines American interests as priority number 1 and China as priority number 2. Should that be criticized? No. But we must take that on board.
I have included these extensive quotes, because I think they demonstrate how Emmanuel Macron over-intellectualizes the political processes. He even made passing reference to the Italian Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci in his remarks to journalists. No doubt they were mostly flummoxed.
My point is that Macron is living in a parallel world. Eggs break when you make an omelet is his view of how the pension reform was passed. He appears to be equally indifferent to objective reality in the geopolitical domain. It is beyond my understanding how he can say that Europe may become a vassal if this or that comes to pass, and not see the present status of Europe as unequivocally that of the vassal with respect to the U.S. hegemon. This obtuseness has to carry over into his evaluation of relations with China and how he conducted his conversations with Xi tête-à-tête for nearly six hours with only interpreters present.
Macron obviously sees himself as a man of destiny. That was patently clear already early in his first term when he delivered his address to a combined session of Congress and positioned himself as being in line with the only other Frenchman who had been so honored, General De Gaulle. The question is what destiny lies ahead for him. Will it be the guillotine, figuratively speaking?
I close this examination of the ‘dry residue’ of Macron’s visit to China with mention of an article that appeared in today’s The Financial Times.
“Emmanuel Macron’s Taiwan remarks spark international backlash” by FT reporters in Paris, Brussels and Washington. The key passages are as follows:
French president Emmanuel Macron has come under fire for saying that Europe should distance itself from brewing tensions between the US and China over Taiwan, and forge its own strategic independence on everything from energy to defence.
Diplomats and lawmakers in the US and in central and eastern Europe slammed Macron for being soft on Beijing and worryingly critical of the US, especially given that Washington has been a staunch backer of Europe as it deals with the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Analysts found the comments particularly ill-timed with China carrying out large-scale military drills in the straits of Taiwan in response to the Taiwanese president’s visit to the US last week….
…the trip also provoked malaise in some quarters for the way the French president was accompanied by a big delegation of business leaders and the announcement of a lucrative deal in China by French jet manufacturer Airbus.
All of this goes to show that with or without the cover of having the EU Commission President at his side, even without public disclosure of the results achieved by the business delegation, Emmanuel Macron was no more successful in avoiding brickbats from other EU Member States, led of course by the Baltics and East Europeans, over his state visit to China than Chancellor Scholz was last November when he took no such precautions to protect Germany’s business interests when meeting with Xi. I note that the deal by Airbus had been announced a week before the trip, presumably to avoid embarrassment during the visit itself. That deal centered on an agreement to set up a second Airbus production line in China, doubling the existing output. It presumably also had a letter of intent to buy a certain number of Airbus aircraft from Toulouse.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023