Chinese President Xi Jinping and French President Emmanuel Macron are meeting this week.
Pool | Getty Images News | Getty Images
European officials are traveling to China in the hope of persuading Beijing to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and cool its recent kinship with the Kremlin.
The 27-member bloc walks a tightrope, looking to develop economic ties with China but also reaffirming a close political and cultural relationship with the United States. This has became particularly difficult with the U.S. administration ramping up its anti-Beijing rhetoric and, even more so, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor.
“It is clear that our relations have become more distant and more difficult in the last few years,” Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, said in a speech Thursday ahead of her trip to Beijing this week.
“We have seen a very deliberate hardening of China’s overall strategic posture for some time. And it has now been matched by a ratcheting up of increasingly assertive actions,” she added.
Von der Leyen is traveling to Beijing alongside France’s President Emmanuel Macron this week. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez met China’s President Xi Jinping last week. Europe’s top foreign affairs diplomat, Josep Borrell, is heading to China next week.
“A lot of Europeans [are] going to China,” Borrell said Tuesday, adding that they have a clear message.
“Its position on Russia’s atrocities and war crimes will determine the quality of our relations with Beijing. In the meantime, the European Union stands united and our transatlantic community remains also united,” he said.
China has failed to condemn Russia’s onslaught in Ukraine. In a visit to Moscow in March, China’s leader Xi Jinping referred to his Russian counterpart as a dear friend.
U.S. – European Union relations have never been stronger.
Antony Blinken
U.S. Secretary of State
Beijing in February proposed a 12-point peace plan for the Ukraine war. The plan fails to specify…
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