When Macron met Xi: Welcome to the New World Disorder

When Macron met Xi: Welcome to the New World Disorder

China’s leader is gathering autocratic regimes to his banner, Europe and the US are divided over how to respond, and the French president just lobbed a grenade onto the field of international diplomacy

The Guardian

It is perhaps no surprise that Emmanuel Macron is in the middle of another big international row. France’s president likes to stir things up. It is his penchant, his trademark foible. Re-elected in 2022 despite a disappointing first term, he has four years left to make a difference. After that, political oblivion beckons – and Macron will still be under 50 in April 2027. Maybe this ticking clock helps explain why he courts danger like a bare-chested surfer riding the waves on the beach at Biarritz.

At home, Macron has caused uproar in recent months by pushing through controversial pension reforms opposed by two-thirds of the population. The row has contributed to a plunging personal approval rating, down to 30% this month. Facing a confidence vote in March, his government survived by bypassing parliament. The reforms are under legal challenge, while violent nationwide protests are continuing. Yet insouciant Macron seems almost oblivious at times.

Abroad, too, Macron has gained a reputation for tossing political hand-grenades – intentionally or by accident, who can say? In 2019, he famously declared that NATO was experiencing “brain death”. He could hardly have been more wrong. In 2021-22, he took it upon himself to mediate, ostensibly on Europe’s behalf, with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine. Even after Putin ignored him and invaded, Macron insisted Moscow should be offered “security guarantees” and that Russia not be “humiliated”.

The latest explosion was ignited by an interview Macron gave after a visit last weekend to Beijing, where he was showered with flattering attention by President Xi Jinping. On China policy, European countries were too subservient to the US and should not be Washington’s “followers”, he suggested. “Being an ally does not mean being a vassal… [or] mean we don’t have the right to think for ourselves.” Macron also implied that defending democratic Taiwan from a Ukraine-type Chinese invasion was not Europe’s business.

A walk in the garden for Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron at the residence of the governor of Guangdong, where Xi’s father lived. Photograph: Jacques Witt/AFP/Getty Images

That was more than enough to put a lot of backs up. Yet two other aspects of his visit caused even greater alarm, and anger, among France’s friends and allies. One was that Macron again appeared to represent himself as speaking for all of Europe, which he definitely was not. This misleading impression was enhanced by his decision to take Ursula von der Leyen along for the ride. The EU commission president was reduced to playing second fiddle, sidelined by her hosts while he hogged the limelight. She must regret it now.

Objectionable to many, too, was Macron’s lauding of the idea of Europe as a separate geopolitical “pole”, or third superpower, on an equal footing with China and the US. His championing of this concept is nothing new. It is rooted in Gaullist thinking. Macron frequently promotes what he calls European “strategic autonomy”. The idea of keeping Americans, and Anglo-Saxons in general, at arm’s length has longstanding appeal in France, especially on the left. Hence his past criticism of NATO.

European autonomy is not such a terrible idea. Trouble is, Europe and the EU – the two are inter-changeable in this context – have consistently failed to live up to pipe dreams of global power. And so, too, has Macron’s France, in respect of offering substantive European leadership. Paris has been notably tight-fisted, for example, over providing military aid to Ukraine, compared with the US, the UK or even tiny, less wealthy countries such as Latvia.

China, on the other hand, just loves Macron’s ideas about rescuing Europe from America’s smothering embrace. His comments were wildly applauded in state-controlled media. Since taking power a decade ago, Xi has often been portrayed in the west as an inscrutable, unknown quantity. That’s really no longer the case. He makes no bones about his intention to create an authoritarian new world order orchestrated from Beijing. And that necessarily entails supplanting the US.

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Header featured image (edited) credit: Xi Jinping and Emmanuel Macron/ REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier/Pool/File Photo

Emphasis added by (TLB) editors

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