After Macron and Xi's Honeymoon, the Cognac Hangover
Positive rhetoric on luxury tariffs can’t hide the gloom as French and Chinese leaders talk past each other.
Emmanuel Macron, France's president, right, greets Xi Jinping, China's president, in Paris on Monday, May 6, 2024.
Photographer: Nathan Laine/BloombergA honeymoon on the sidelines of a Cold War: That’s how relations between Charles de Gaulle’s France and Communist China began 60 years ago, and how Xi Jinping wants to portray his relationship with Emmanuel Macron during his first European tour in five years. But despite the warm rhetoric and hopes of a tariff-war climbdown, the reality is we’re firmly in the hangover stage — and it’s sobering-up time, not least because of the highly symbolic cognac served to Xi.
Choosing Paris as a first stop before Serbia and Hungary was in itself a message. While the latter two countries serve as a kind of shop window for transformative Chinese investment at the European Union’s frontiers, France is where China hopes to drive a wedge between the EU and the US. Paris is, after all, the home of Gaullist pride, exports of Chinese favorites like Louis Vuitton handbags and suspicion of American hegemony: Last year, on a trip to China, Macron said Europe risked becoming “America’s followers” if it couldn’t stand alone on issues like trade and defense.