The Japan Times - Pandas and ping-pong: Macron to end China visit on lighter note

The French president and his wife Brigitte will head to the city of Chengdu in the southwestern Sichuan province, to meet the Chinese presidential couple in a setting worlds apart from the monumental and solemn Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Emmanuel Macron said he was "very touched" by this gesture, a departure from official protocol, after he hosted Xi in the Pyrenees in May 2024, a place where Macron spent time as a child.

These are all signs of mutual trust and a desire to "act together" at a time when international tensions are rising and trade imbalances are widening to China's advantage, he emphasized on Thursday.

After his visit to the Pyrenees, Xi has chosen to take his guest to the slopes of Mount Qingcheng, at around 726 meters elevation, where an imposing dam and third-century BC irrigation system are located.

The two presidential couples will conclude their reunion with lunch, before Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron continue with a more personal agenda.

- Panda diplomacy -

In Chengdu, China's fourth-largest city with 21 million inhabitants that is considered one of the most culturally and socially open in China, Macron will meet with students.

Brigitte Macron, for her part, will visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where two 17-year-old pandas, loaned to France in 2012 as part of China's "panda diplomacy", have just returned.

There, she will meet Yuan Meng, the first giant panda born in France in 2017, to whom she is "Godmother", and who arrived in China in 2023.

The forests of Sichuan are home to numerous protected species, from snow leopards to giant pandas, famous for their languid gait and dark eyes surrounded by black spots.

Through loans to zoos, China has made these bears emblematic ambassadors of its friendship with peoples from Japan to Germany.

Cubs born abroad are sent a few years later to Chengdu to participate in breeding and rehabilitation programmes in the wild.

For his part, the French president will meet table tennis brothers Alexis and Felix Lebrun, stars of the 2024 Paris Olympics, who are in China for the Mixed Team Table Tennis World Cup.

- Tentative Signals -

On Thursday in Beijing, the French president urged his Chinese counterpart to work towards ending the war in Ukraine and to correct the trade imbalances with France and Europe.

China regularly calls for peace talks and respect for the territorial integrity of all countries, but has never condemned Russia for its 2022 invasion.

Western governments accuse Beijing of providing Russia with crucial economic support for its war effort, notably by supplying it with military components for its defence industry, something Beijing denies.

Emmanuel Macron's call for increased Chinese investment in France appears to have been heeded.

A letter of intent to this effect was signed on Thursday, with Xi Jinping stating his readiness to "increase reciprocal investments" for a "fair trading environment."

T.Sato--JT