French president Emmanuel Macron has landed in Beijing in the latest bid by a European leader to urge China’s Xi Jinping to wield his influence with Vladimir Putin to push for a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine.
On the eve of his three-day visit to China, the French president spoke with his US counterpart Joe Biden and the pair “reiterated their steadfast support for Ukraine in the face of Russia’s ongoing aggression”, according to the White House.
But Macron, who will be joined by European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, is unlikely to convince the Chinese leader to drop his personal backing of Putin or China’s economic support of Russia, analysts said.
Dexter Roberts, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council think-tank in Washington, said the possibility of any real shift in the near future in both how Xi views Putin and in how the Chinese Communist party leadership views Russia was “basically zero”.
“Xi Jinping and other top leaders genuinely feel sympathy for Russia. They believe Putin has his back pushed against the wall by Nato expanding,” Roberts said. “They very much see a parallel . . . with the US presence in the Indo-Pacific.”
In an interview with the Financial Times this week, von der Leyen said China was in a position to influence Russia over Ukraine “and therefore [it has] a responsibility” to do so. She previously warned Beijing that its stance on the war would be a “determining factor” for the future of the EU-China relationship.
Xi last month travelled to Moscow in a clear demonstration of his personal ties with Russia’s president, whom he called his “dear friend”. Also in February, China released a 12-point position paper on the war in Ukraine in which it sought to position itself as a non-aligned broker in the conflict.
But the document mostly reiterated Beijing’s previous talking points and was dismissed by western officials for failing to dispel concerns about Beijing’s touted “no-limits partnership” with Moscow.
Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, said China’s leadership had done little to engage with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who Xi has not called — or consider Kyiv’s interests, despite Moscow “flagrantly violating its neighbour’s territorial integrity and the UN Charter”.
“China is unlikely to converge with western positions on Ukraine during European leaders’ visits to Beijing,” Easley said. “Instead, Xi may double-down on support of Putin while trying to appear the reasonable statesman in dialogue with all parties.”
The trip follows visits to Beijing late last year by Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, and European Council president Charles Michel, neither of whom was able to achieve a substantive change in Chinese policy.
Instead, experts noted, Beijing has sought to cleave individual officials away from broader anti-China sentiment and an escalating push for economic decoupling.
“Chinese actors will look to drive wedges between US allies, increase national technological autonomy, pressure vulnerable foreign firms and win ever greater market share in developing countries,” Easley said.
In an olive branch to France, China plans to sign co-operation agreements across aerospace, civil nuclear energy, agriculture and supply chains during Macron’s visit.
Chinese state media on Tuesday quoted Lu Shaye, Xi’s envoy in Paris, as acknowledging “setbacks and difficulties” in relations with France and Europe, for which he blamed the US for forcing countries to “take sides”.
Despite the hardening attitudes in Europe, Lu said: “There is no fundamental conflict of interest or contradiction between the two sides.”
Additional reporting by William Langley in Hong Kong