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Stuart Lau

French President Emmanuel Macron has brushed aside the need to follow the United States’ approach to China, leaving the visiting US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo focusing largely on counterterrorism during their meeting on Monday.
Macron addressed China in a wide-ranging interview in a French publication shortly before the key member of US President Donald Trump’s administration visited France.
Macron told Le Grand Continent that Europe and the US “have a different world view” adding: “It is therefore not tenable that our international policy should be dependent on [the US] or be trailing behind it. And what I am saying is even truer for China.”

Referring to the Belt and Road Initiative, which the US has derided as a neocolonial project of China’s, Macron said: “You are right to say that the merit of the New Silk Roads is that it is a very powerful geopolitical concept. That is a fact. And it is also a testimony of the vitality of a nation and its fortitude.”
US Justice Department calls ‘China Initiative’ to counter Beijing a success
France is the only European stop on Pompeo’s seven-nation tour taken soon after the US election. Macron and other world leaders have congratulated Democrat Joe Biden on his presidential victory, a result that Trump has been contesting.
The zero fanfare welcome for Pompeo, a Trump loyalist, at the presidential Elysee Palace signalled how Macron’s government was already looking ahead to the Biden era.


Macron’s office described Pompeo’s stop as a “courtesy” visit. The US State Department said in a statement that Pompeo and Macron had discussed “significant threats to global security, efforts to counter violent extremism, Iran’s destabilising behaviour and Hezbollah’s malign influence in Lebanon”.
It added that Pompeo had also stressed the importance of the transatlantic alliance, Nato unity and countering China’s increasing global influence.
Macron slams media coverage of France’s position on Islamic extremism
However, Pompeo’s call for France to acknowledge China’s policy against Uygur Muslims in Xinjiang landed at an inconvenient time, with Macron upping the ante against radical Islamists in France after the beheading of Samuel Paty, a French schoolteacher who showed cartoons in relation to the Prophet Muhammad.
Before meeting Macron, Pompeo laid a bouquet of red, white and blue flowers at a memorial to victims of terrorism at a Paris landmark, the Hotel des Invalides.
From Paris, Pompeo travelled on to Turkey, where he will meet religious leaders in Istanbul but not government officials.


Senior State Department officials said the lack of official meetings in Turkey was because of scheduling issues during the brief stop. They said meetings had been sought but Turkish officials could not come to Istanbul from the capital of Ankara when Pompeo would be there.
The officials noted that Pompeo and his Turkish counterpart planned to see each other in early December at a meeting of Nato foreign ministers.
Pompeo will also visit Israeli settlements in the West Bank that have been avoided by previous secretaries of state.


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Macron is among world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning US election but meets key Trump administration member on post-election tour
Global security and terrorism among subjects discussed as Macron faces radical Islamists in his own country



French president is among world leaders to congratulate Joe Biden on winning US election but meets key Trump administration member on post-election tour.


US-China relations

France

Emmanuel Macron

Belt and Road Initiative