On the first trip to Europe in five years, there is room for all the faces of China. After a couple of days seeking to build bridges with France and the European Union, Chinese President Xi Jinping attacked the Atlantic Alliance this Tuesday for the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. “25 years ago today, NATO blatantly bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, killing three Chinese journalists […]. We must never forget this,” Xi expressed in an opinion article published in the Serbian newspaper Politikujust before starting his state visit to Serbia.
Xi has made the anniversary coincide exactly – the attack occurred on May 7, 1999 – with the start of the second part of his European tour, which will take him first to Serbia and then to Hungary, the two countries that orbit closest of Beijing in Europe. The text has been published with the Chinese leader still on French soil. After Monday’s meeting in Paris with the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Macron and Xi traveled this Tuesday, accompanied by their wives, to the Pyrenees and the port of Tourmalet. The Pyrenees stage has a sporting significance, as it is an emblematic place of the Tour de France. And private: 30 kilometers from there is Bagnères-de-Bigorre, the town where the French president’s grandmother was originally from and where he spent time as a child.
Macron seduces at short distances, and by taking Xi to the department of the Hautes-Pyrénées, associated with his childhood, he seeks to establish a bond with his Chinese counterpart. He took him to lunch at La Mongie, the resort where he skied as a child. Surely he must have told you about Germaine Noguès, Manette, his maternal grandmother and, according to biographers, his “second mother,” who was a school teacher and taught him to love literature. in mythology macronianHe is a fundamental character. “Now that she is gone,” the president wrote in his book Revolution, “there is not a day that I do not think of her and do not look for her gaze.” After the more intimate and relaxed Pyrenean break, Xi plans to travel to Serbia.
“The Chinese people appreciate peace, but we will never allow such a tragic history to be repeated,” the communist leader expressed in the aforementioned article, in which he also praises the friendship with Serbia. It was “forged with the blood of our compatriots,” says the Asian president. The attack, in which around twenty diplomats were also injured, occurred during the air campaign launched by NATO in 1999 with the intention of forcing the Yugoslav leader, Slobodan Milosevic, to end his campaign of ethnic cleansing against Albanian rebels. in Kosovo. The United States assured in July 1999 that it was an “accidental bombing” attributable to “an error.” China takes advantage of each anniversary to denounce what it considers “a barbaric crime” and criticize the Atlantic Alliance and its “outdated Cold War mentality.”
Serbia, a candidate country to join the EU, is also a member of the New Silk Road, the infrastructure megaprogram launched by Beijing a decade ago. Hungary, also part of the initiative, is Beijing’s closest EU ally, and the usual fractious voice in each round of community bloc sanctions against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In the latter country, a much more sympathetic voice is expected with Beijing’s trade claims. Xi wants Brussels to reverse its “risk reduction” policy, which could limit the Asian giant’s exports to the community bloc, especially in sectors linked to the green transition, in which China has become a world leader. “The excess capacity [productiva de China] It does not exist,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said last month during an interview with Chinese state television in Beijing. “It’s just a political, ideological statement.”
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The B side of the European visit begins after Macron and Xi joined together on Monday to call for an “Olympic truce” to be applied and all wars to cease during the Paris Olympic Games this summer, a message of harmony thrown as a cherry on top. to a state visit marked by differences over the war in Ukraine and trade tensions between China and the European Union.
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