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.

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.

  • @[email protected]
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    7 months ago

    Mentioned this elsewhere; With the upcoming European trip including Hungary, China keeps finding right wing partners, and unusually often from the ultra/alt/anti-EU reactionary sects. Wonder why they don’t collaborate with left

    And after the news about what’s going on in Africa, their imperialism seems to have racial/racist/xenophobic subjucative motives as well

    • Flying SquidM
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      117 months ago

      Wonder why they don’t collaborate with left

      I’m sure Tankies have some very legitimate excuse about why their favorite “communist” country never seems to be especially left-wing.

      • The Assman
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        27 months ago

        President for life Xi Jinping is a champion of socialist values

        • Flying SquidM
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          77 months ago

          Those Chinese workers sleeping on floor mats in concrete bunks being paid a pittance to work extremely long hours in hazardous jobs sure do control the means of production.

    • manucode
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      07 months ago

      One could question why a German-Chinese man who’s supposedly a critic of the PRC government, can freely travel between Germany and China without facing arrest. Instead of, you know, employing him and giving him access to the European Parliament. But what do I know.

      • @[email protected]
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        37 months ago

        Maybe you misunderstood, the relationship and actions with China in Africa seem to have racism

  • @jimmydoreisalefty
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    57 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.

  • @[email protected]
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    07 months ago

    China loves to bend poorer nations to its will through massive loans, with exorbitant interest, most recently through its One Belt One Road initiative (https://archive.ph/wHYlP).

    Increased trade with France would simply give window-dressing to China’s loansharking.