Despite the outbreak of coronavirus and health measures that impede the international meetings, Macron and Xi Jinping have had a long telephone interview Friday. The opportunity for the French president and his chinese counterpart to talk about the management of the pandemic, aid to Africa, and the records of the climate and biodiversity, announced the Elysee. During this exchange, Emmanuel Macron has also discussed the situation in hong Kong, said the Elysée, without further detail, while China undergoes increasing pressure of the Western powers to waive the requirement to pass a national security law in Hong Kong. The United Kingdom, the United States, Australia and Canada have publicly expressed their apprehensions, and the british foreign minister, Dominic Raab, has called Tuesday on Beijing to renounce this act.
also, Emmanuel Macron emphasized to his interlocutor, "the central role and essential to WHO" as well as the importance of the international initiative Act-on diagnostics, treatment, vaccine, and support to health systems. He also recalled the importance of the moratorium on the debts of the african countries with the most fragile enshrined in the G20 framework," and "the need of giving it in the best possible translation for multilateral concrete". Finally, the French president recalled the coming summits on the environment scheduled in China in late 2020 or early 2021 (COP15 on biodiversity and COP26 on the climate), and "marked its commitment to continue to build in the coming months, with China a concrete agenda" for these two meetings. It was hoped that these priorities "are at the heart of the definition, in the next few months, an ambitious partnership, and balanced between Europe and China" in the wake of the high-level meeting held in Paris in march 2019.
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Tensions between Paris and Beijing
The French president also discussed with Xi Jinping, a possible new date for the EU-China summit, initially planned on the 14 of September in Leipzig (Germany) but that was postponed. This exchange comes after tensions between Paris and Beijing. In mid-April, the minister of foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian, had summoned the Chinese ambassador to France after the publication on the website of the embassy of a long article accusing the staff of residential facilities for dependent elderly people (Ehpad) to be "left to die by their residents, hunger and disease".
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"We want to be respected like China, it wants to be," said the minister. Tensions are growing between Washington and Beijing. The us president, Donald Trump, makes China responsible for the spread of the pandemic of novel coronavirus and the threat Beijing new trade sanctions.
