Before Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in France for a state visit, French President Emmanuel Macron announced his intention to renew economic ties with China.
In an interview with the French newspaper Tribune Dimanche, President Macron said that Europe wants more mutually beneficial economic relations with China, in order to ensure better economic security.
The president said he was calling for an “aggiornamento,” which means update in Italian, “because China currently has excess production capacity in many sectors and is exporting a lot to Europe.”
President Xi will be on a five-day tour of Europe and is expected to arrive in France, his first country, on the afternoon of the 5th. Relations between the two countries are at their most strained in decades amid a series of European Union investigations into excessive subsidies, as well as criticism of China over allegations of state-sponsored espionage and cyber-attacks.
President Macron reportedly backed a major EU investigation into China’s electric vehicles (EVs) late last year, and is launching an offensive spell to attract investment from China, the world’s second-largest economy. After hosting President Xi for lunch at the Elysée Palace in Paris, Mr Macron will take him to the Pyrenees region of his childhood home, where his grandmother lived.
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news-rsf-original-reference paywall">Original title: France’s Macron Calls for Reset of Economic Ties with China (excerpt)
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