New ‘Silk Road’ can’t be one-way, says Macron

Xian, January 8 

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Monday China and Europe should work together on Beijing’s “Belt and Road” initiative, a project aiming to build a modern-day “Silk Road” he said could not be “one-way”.

Macron began his first state visit to China with a stop in Xian, an eastern departure point of the ancient Silk Road, hoping to relaunch EU-China relations often strained by Beijing’s restrictions on foreign investment and trade.

“After all, the ancient Silk Roads were never only Chinese,” Macron told an audience of academics, students and business people at the Daming Palace, the royal residence for the Tang dynasty for more than 220 years.

“By definition, these roads can only be shared. If they are roads, they cannot be one-way,” he said.

Unveiled in 2013, the Belt and Road project is aimed at connecting China by land and sea to Southeast Asia, Pakistan and Central Asia, and beyond to the Middle East, Europe and Africa.

Xi pledged $124 billion for the plan at a summit in May but it has faced suspicion in Western capitals that it is intended more to assert Chinese influence than Beijing’s professed desire to spread prosperity.

Macron, who pledged to visit China at least once every year during his mandate, said the new infrastructure and cultural projects promoted by China could also be in France’s and Europe’s interest if done in a spirit of cooperation.  — Reuters

French reply to panda diplomacy: Horse diplomacy 

• Never let it be said diplomacy amounts to more than horse-trading. French President Emmanuel Macron went out of his way to win the heart of the Chinese leader on the first day of his state visit on Monday, offering him a horse of the elite French Republican Guard
• Macron is on a three-day tour of China starting with a stop in Xian, an eastern departure point of the ancient Silk Road where he visited the Terracotta Army with his wife Brigitte and will talk of past and future Sino-French relations
• An adept of soft diplomacy and symbols, Macron picked an eight-year old brown gelding named Vesuvius from the presidential cavalry corps and braved stringent Chinese quarantine checks to offer it to President Xi Jinping
• The choice of the gift was made after the Chinese president expressed his fascination for the 104 horsemen who escorted him during his last visit to Paris in 2014
• It is the first time France has offered one of the elite cavalry corps’ horses and is also a response to China’s “panda diplomacy”, after Macron’s wife Brigitte became the godmother of a Chinese panda lent by Beijing to a zoo near Paris