French president Emmanuel Macron doubled down on his outreach to Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a call with President Biden today, declaring that “China has a role to play, in the medium term, in helping to end the [Ukraine] conflict in compliance with the purposes and principles of the UN charter.”
The two leaders issued noticeably different summaries of their conversation, which took place earlier today. Biden’s statement described the ways in which he and Macron agree on advancing peace in the Indo-Pacific and maintaining the stability of the Taiwan Strait, while Macron played up Chinese engagement in ending the war in Ukraine.
Getting Chinese buy-in for settling the war was one of the main goals of the French president’s recent trip to China — which set off a firestorm of controversy after he accused the U.S. of dragging Europe into a war that doesn’t concern the continent.
“The two heads of state agreed on the importance of continuing to engage the Chinese leadership on that basis,” the French summary said.
Macron also touted the “major contribution” of the European Union to supporting Ukraine, which the summary said reaches 67 billion euros. And he also doubled down on the importance of European efforts to rearm to take up their burden in maintaining transatlantic security.
While summaries from the White House and Élysée Palace both mentioned the need to ensure international law in the Indo-Pacific, only the U.S. summary mentioned that “they reaffirmed the importance of maintaining peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”
French analyst Antoine Bondaz, a professor at Sciences Po, called Macron’s remarks “counterproductive” because they would highlight the contrast with Biden.
After Macron told Politico that France would not “take our cure from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction” regarding Taiwan, setting off an international controversy, he clarified his comments, saying during a press conference that France supports the status quo and its current One China policy. He still took a dig at Washington, though, saying that “to be allied does not mean to be a vassal,” and he fired back at former president Donald Trump, who accused him of “kissing [Xi’s] ass.”