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ABOARD COTAM UNITÉ (FRANCE’S AIR REQUIRE ONE) — Europe should lower its reliance on the United States and prevent getting dragged into a conflict in between China and the U.S. over Taiwan, French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his aircraft back from a three-day state see to China.
Speaking with POLITICO and 2 French reporters after spending around 6 hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping throughout his journey, Macron highlighted his family pet theory of “strategic autonomy” for Europe, most likely led by France, to end up being a “third superpower.”
He said “the great risk” Europe deals with is that it “gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy,” while flying from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, aboard COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have actually enthusiastically backed Macron’s principle of tactical autonomy and Chinese authorities continuously describe it in their transactions with European nations. Party leaders and theorists in Beijing are persuaded the West remains in decrease and China is on the ascendant which damaging the transatlantic relationship will help accelerate this pattern.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview. “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,” he said.
Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou headed back to Paris, China released big military workouts around the self-ruled island of Taiwan, which China declares as its area however the U.S. has actually assured to arm and safeguard.
Those workouts were an action to Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen’s 10-day diplomatic trip of Central American nations that consisted of a conference with Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy while she transited in California. People knowledgeable about Macron’s thinking said he mored than happy Beijing had at least waited up until he ran out Chinese airspace prior to releasing the simulated “Taiwan encirclement” workout.
Beijing has actually consistently threatened to attack in recent years and has a policy of separating the democratic island by requiring other nations to acknowledge it as part of “one China.”
Taiwan talks
Macron and Xi talked about Taiwan “intensely,” according to French authorities accompanying the president, who appears to have actually taken a more conciliatory method than the U.S. or perhaps the European Union.
“Stability in the Taiwan Strait is of paramount importance,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who accompanied Macron for part of his go to, said she informed Xi throughout their conference in Beijing last Thursday. “The threat [of] the use of force to change the status quo is unacceptable.”
Xi reacted by stating anybody who believed they might affect Beijing on Taiwan was misguided.
Macron appears to concur with that evaluation.
“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine; how can we credibly say on Taiwan, ‘watch out, if you do something wrong we will be there’? If you really want to increase tensions that’s the way to do it,” he said.
“Europe is more willing to accept a world in which China becomes a regional hegemon,” said Yanmei Xie, a geopolitics expert at Gavekal Dragonomics. “Some of its leaders even believe such a world order may be more advantageous to Europe.”
In his trilateral conference with Macron and von der Leyen last Thursday in Beijing, Xi Jinping went off script on just 2 subjects — Ukraine and Taiwan — according to somebody who existed in the room.
“Xi was visibly annoyed for being held responsible for the Ukraine conflict and he downplayed his recent visit to Moscow,” this individual said. “He was clearly enraged by the U.S. and very upset over Taiwan, by the Taiwanese president’s transit through the U.S. and [the fact that] foreign policy issues were being raised by Europeans.”
In this conference, Macron and von der Leyen took comparable lines on Taiwan, this individual said. But Macron consequently invested more than 4 hours with the Chinese leader, much of it with just translators present, and his tone was much more conciliatory than von der Leyen’s when speaking to reporters.
‘Vassals’ caution
Macron likewise argued that Europe had actually increased its reliance on the U.S. for weapons and energy and should now concentrate on increasing European defense markets.
He likewise recommended Europe must lower its reliance on the “extraterritoriality of the U.S. dollar,” an essential policy goal 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.
Russia, China, Iran and other nations have actually been struck by U.S. sanctions in recent years that are based upon rejecting access to the dominant dollar-denominated worldwide monetary system. Some in Europe have actually grumbled about “weaponization” of the dollar by Washington, which requires European business to quit business and cut ties with 3rd nations or face debilitating secondary sanctions.
While being in the stateroom of his A330 airplane in a hoodie with the words “French Tech” emblazoned on the chest, Macron declared to have already “won the ideological battle on strategic autonomy” for Europe.
He did not resolve the concern of continuous U.S. security assurances for the Continent, which relies greatly on American defense support in the middle of the very first significant land war in Europe because World War II.
As among the 5 long-term members of the U.N. Security Council and the only nuclear power in the EU, France remains in a unique position militarily. However, the nation has actually contributed far less to the defense of Ukraine versus Russia’s intrusion than lots of other nations.
As prevails in France and lots of other European nations, the French President’s workplace, referred to as the Elysée Palace, demanded monitoring and “proofreading” all the president’s quotes to be released in this short article as a condition of approving the interview. This breaks POLITICO’s editorial requirements and policy, however we consented to the terms in order to speak straight with the French president. POLITICO firmly insisted that it cannot trick its readers and would not release anything the president did not state. The prices estimate in this short article were all in fact said by the president, however some parts of the interview in which the president spoke much more honestly about Taiwan and Europe’s tactical autonomy were eliminated by the Elysée.
