China’s president arrives as EU anti-subsidy investigations and tensions over espionage, Ukraine and Taiwan continue

China’s president arrives as EU anti-subsidy investigations and tensions over espionage, Ukraine and Taiwan continue

China’s president, Xi Jinping, is to visit Europe next week for the first time in five years, in a tour that will take in the unlikely trifecta of France, Hungary and Serbia.

The visit comes as China pushes to avoid a trade war with the EU, while attitudes towards Beijing in the bloc are hardening after multiple spying scandals and China’s ongoing support for Russia in the war in Ukraine.

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But despite Xi and Macron’s personal chemistry, “Chinese Communist party leaders don’t have friends. They have interests,” says Charles Parton, a senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute and a former British diplomat in China. “It’s a way of ruthlessly pushing forward your own interests.”

“Wherever China sees benefit from dealing with Europe as a whole, then it does. When it sees the benefit of dealing with individuals, sometimes because it undermines the whole, then it deals with individuals,” Parton says.

  • @jimmydoreisaleftyEnglish
    6•2 months ago

    As some peeps in the US say: “NATO is a terrorist organization.”

    Just more pushing China and Russia together, while better for our military companies for WW3, much profits to be had.

    China’s hostility to Nato is part of the reason why Beijing has maintained its support for Moscow since the invasion of Ukraine. Xi’s visit will “remind the world that although China and Serbia are geographically separated by the Eurasian continent, they share the same security interests. We need to strengthen our cooperation to overcome the security threats from the US and Nato,” Shen says.