China embarrasses France by pushing pro-Moscow Ukraine peace deal
Tom Rogan
Traveling around Europe this week, Li Hui, China’s envoy for the war in Ukraine, detonated French President Emmanuel Macron’s narrative that Beijing can be a productive partner for Ukraine-Russia peace.
As the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, Li “carried a clear message: U.S. allies in Europe should assert their autonomy and urge an immediate cease-fire, leaving Russia in possession of the parts of its smaller neighbor that it now occupies, according to Western officials familiar with talks in capitals across the continent.”
This is an absurd foundation for peace. Inherent in its obvious unacceptability to Ukraine, China’s narrative asks the West to abandon Kyiv just as Ukraine expands its strategic initiative. Russia’s war efforts face major problems, challenges that are about to get far worse. That Beijing is pushing such a Moscow-favorable agreement shows that Xi Jinping’s priority is not a just peace, but rather the most preferable peace for Russia.
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Fortunately, as the Wall Street Journal also reports, most European governments recognize the ludicrousness of Li’s proposals. They recognize that China is pushing this plan in service only of the pretense, and a very thin one at that, that Beijing wants to help Europe address its key foreign policy concern.
Not so France.
Meeting with Li on Tuesday, a director general of the French Foreign Ministry “stressed that France was convinced that China could play a constructive role with a view to restoring a just and lasting peace in [relation to the war in Ukraine].” This dreamy rhetoric follows Macron’s observation during his April state visit to China that Beijing could “play a major role” in peace negotiations. Macron also claimed China had “a will to play a responsible role and try to build a pathway to peace.”
Macron is not stupid. In fact, he’s one of the smartest world leaders. But it’s clear that the reason Macron is claiming that China is genuinely interested in broaching a just peace isn’t because he actually believes that. Rather, he’s saying as much only because doing so gives Macron political cover for his broader appeasement policy toward Beijing. The French president’s defining interest in China is to maximize Chinese investments in France and maximize Chinese exports of French goods. Yet, by pretending to his Western partners that his conciliatory engagement with Beijing will foster Beijing’s efforts to achieve a resolution to the war in Ukraine, Macron’s trade-centric agenda appears a little less shallow. Instead, France’s policy toward China appears, in that finest Macron manner, to have a hidden nuance deserving of French allied respect.
Macron’s problem is that by ultimately associating himself closer to China than to his European and American allies, Macron undermines the Western unity needed to deter Beijing and Moscow’s aggressive excesses. Whether it’s their increasing espionage cooperation or their escalating joint military activity around Japan, Beijing and Moscow are making clear that their partnership has increasingly few limits. Willfully ignoring that reality, Macron makes France an unfortunate accessory to that partnership’s prosperity.