Humiliated In France, Macron Plays Games With China

One has to hand it to Emmanuel Macron: he has principles – and, like Groucho Marx, if people don’t like them, he has others, The Telegraph stressed in an opinion piece.

Photo Insert: Macron scooted off to China last month, where he appeased President Xi Jinping.

Last month, he scooted off to China, where he appeased President Xi Jinping.

Followed by an 80-strong entourage of corporate bosses eager for contracts, he went all de Gaulle a couple of times, notably in an interview with Politico, in which he said that Europe had no business “getting caught up in crises that are not ours” and to salvage her “strategic autonomy,” the continent should not become “America’s vassal.”

Yet, that same month, a French parliamentary delegation of three Macronista MPs (and a lone Républicain) was off to Taipei, to meet most of President Tsai Ing-wen’s government, and “reaffirm our support to Taiwanese democracy” (tweeted by Constance Le Grip, a former Sarkozy aide, now a pro-Macron MP).

You can’t really call this a damage control operation – the trip had been planned for some time.

What it really shows, if proof was still needed, was that French foreign policy, like French domestic affairs, is made up as it goes along, by one Macron, Emmanuel. (The clever Bruno Tertrais of Fondation pour la recherche stratégique, a think-tank, recently and accurately told The Economist “Emmanuel Macron’s chief diplomatic adviser is Emmanuel Macron”).

Which isn’t noticeably working out so well for le Président.

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