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.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    6 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.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        6 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.