China's new 'Silk Road' cannot be one-way- Macron

China's new 'Silk Road' cannot be one-way, France's Macron says
Michel Rose

XIAN, China (Reuters) - French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday China and Europe should work together on Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, a project aiming to build a modern-day
“Silk Road” he said could not be “one-way”.

Macron began his first state visit to China with a stop in Xian, an eastern departure point of the ancient Silk Road, hoping to relaunch EU-China relations often strained by Beijing’s restrictions on
foreign investment and trade.

“After all, the ancient Silk Roads were never only Chinese,” Macron told an audience of academics, students and business people at the Daming Palace, the royal residence for the Tang dynasty for
more than 220 years.

“By definition, these roads can only be shared. If they are roads, they cannot be one-way,” he said.

Unveiled in 2013, the Belt and Road project is aimed at connecting China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Xi pledged $124 billion for the plan at a summit in May but it has faced suspicion in Western capitals that it is intended more to assert Chinese influence than Beijing’s professed desire to spread
prosperity.

Macron, who pledged to visit China at least once every year during his mandate, said the new infrastructure and cultural projects promoted by China could also be in France’s and Europe’s interest if done in a spirit of cooperation.

“These roads cannot be those of a new hegemony, which would transform those that they cross into vassals,” Macron said.

Alice Ekman of the Paris-based IFRI think-tank said: ”For the moment, considering how extensive and unclear the Chinese project continues to be, several European countries including France have
shown caution about it.

“For China, the new Silk Roads are also a tool to promote new international standards, rules and norms that are different from those currently used by France and other European countries,”

British Finance Minister Philip Hammond said in December Britain, which is quitting the European Union, wanted closer cooperation with China over the Belt and Road scheme.

Macron, 40, has said Europe should not be “naive” in its trade relations, pushing in Brussels for more stringent anti-dumping rules against imports of cheap Chinese steel.

In June, he urged the European Commission to build a system for screening investments in strategic sectors from outside the bloc, which drew criticism from Beijing.

In Xian, Macron said he hoped EU-Chinese relations could have a new start, based on “balanced rules”, after acknowledging there had been mistrust and “legitimate questions” in China as well as
fears amongst Europeans.

Europe was now united and ready to cooperate with China after years of crisis-management and economic stagnation, Macron said.

“What I came to tell you, is that Europe is back,” he added.

The French president, who is travelling with a delegation of 50 businessmen, is hoping to gain more access for French companies to Chinese markets.

Reporting by Michel Rose; Editing by Paul Tait and Robin Pomeroy Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

What Does France's President Want to Achieve in China?

What Does France's President Want to Achieve in China?
On the eve of President Macron’s visit to China, the relationship is caught between expectations and frustrations.

By Valérie Niquet
January 03, 2018
   
President Emmanuel Macron has chosen: He will go to China for his first visit to Asia. To those around him, who argue for a strengthening of ties between Paris and Beijing, it is an obvious choice.

China is the second largest economy in the world; its overwhelming “Belt and Road” project seems to offer unlimited opportunities. And of course, for France, which has the ambition to play a global role on the international scene, China seems to be the right partner: a nuclear power and permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, with a veto right that weighs on all major decisions. Moreover, for a French president who wants to assert himself as the antithesis, if not the equal of U.S. President Donald Trump, “mighty China” offers the opportunity to play that role.

Beijing knows all this, and needs allies to face an American power that, contrary to the initial hopes of the Chinese leadership, might be unpredictable but has not given up its engagement in Asia. And
not everyone in Paris appreciates the growing uneasiness and tensions in the region, far beyond the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula, around China’s future role. Confident in this lack of awareness, Chinese leaders look forward to a reception where flattering could win the support of a French president whose model is de Gaulle, and who hitherto has tended to focus — and know —
much more about Europe and its environment than about faraway Asia.

The ambition of the Chinese leadership is to persuade the French president to position himself on issues like North Korea as a “go-between,” defending “dialogue” against the more “aggressive”
posture of the United States, and to implicitly recognize by his choices the pre-eminence of China in the region. Macron may be all too ready to welcome that role.

Yet, everything might not be that simple in this first visit. Opportunities and commonalities do exist. However, mutual expectations are far from coinciding perfectly. And the frustrations that also
characterize the Sino-French relationship have not disappeared.

For Beijing, France is never better than when it confines itself to its role of “old friend of China.” This role should be that of the constant supporter of “multipolarism,” against the “hyperpuissance”
(a French concept) of the United States. This, without stressing the fact that, if China is favorable to the “democratization of international relations,” its only objectives are actually to increase its room for maneuver by driving a wedge between like-minded liberal democracies, and to establish itself as the uncontested leader of the Asian pole.

This ambition however, does not correspond to the evolution of the contemporary world. It cannot serve the interests of France in an area where the will to find support against a destabilizing and too
assertive Chinese power is the common point of all of Beijing’s neighbors. In other words, for Paris, which indeed is not an irrelevant player in the region, the question of “siding” with or against China,
and its strategic and economic consequences, cannot be avoided.

France is the only European country with direct territorial interests in the Asia-Pacific. By multiplying military cooperation deals, with Australia, Indonesia, or India for example, or maybe tomorrow with Japan, France also plays a major role in defense capacity building in the region. As such, and because of its position in a post-Brexit European Union, and at the UN, what France does is of interest to countries whose primary strategic objective is to balance a Chinese power obsessed by its own strategy of “rejuvenation” through assertiveness.

The second factor of frustration, of which the French president seems much more conscious as it directly relates to France socio-economic issues, is that of the persistent lack of balance in economic
relations and trade. China may be perceived as an economic superpower; however, it still needs high growth to try to preserve political stability. Beijing is not ready to give up any export market, nor
any strategy of division between individual members of the European Union to gain better access to benefits.

In terms of investments, the PRC, whose party-state has the capacity to act without checks – contrary to norms-abiding democratic governments – is also ready to seize all opportunities that can feed
its own development, particularly in advanced technologies, at the fringe of the civilian and the military.

Faced with these undisguised ambitions, Macron is the first to plead with such clarity for more reciprocity, and France supports the strengthening of regulations for Chinese investments in sensitive
sectors. Similarly, with regard to the Belt and Road Initiative, the flagship project of President Xi Jinping to achieve his “China dream,” France remains cautious and aware of its many financial and
governance pitfalls.

Beijing – as with any other partners – would like the Franco-Chinese relationship to be entirely at the service of its own priorities. On the contrary, the strategic and economic interests of France in Asia
are multiple and cannot be limited to an exclusive partnership with the People’s Republic of China. The successes of the new French presidency’s “Asian policy” will be appreciated only in light of the
capacity that Paris will demonstrate — by concrete actions — to maintain a necessary balance between the powers of the region.

Valérie Niquet is a senior visiting fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and head of the Asia department at FRS (Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique), Paris.

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Tamils from across Europe demonstrated in Geneva on 15 September 2014, demanding justice against genocide and a referendum on independence, organised by the Tamil Coordinating Committee (TCC).

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