Don’t make same mistake with Xi Jinping and China as you did with Putin, EU is warned

Emmanuel Macron and Ursula von der Leyen have been warned “not to make the same mistake twice” ahead of a meeting with Xi Jinping which critics say has echoes of Europe's attempts to woo Vladimir Putin.

The French president and Ms von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, are due to meet Mr Xi Jinping on Tuesday, but their visit has set alarm bells ringing in Eastern Europe, with Lithuania's foreign minister warning that an economic partnership with Vladimir Putin failed to deliver security for the continent.

“We should remember that attempts to contain Russia by offering economic partnership failed,” said Gabrielius Landsbergis. “Putin was, in fact, emboldened by our flexibility, not persuaded. Similar tactics would also embolden China,” he added.

Lithuania opened a de-facto embassy in Taiwan in November last year, prompting China to downgrade diplomatic relations with the Baltic country. Beijing considers Taiwan a breakaway province and advocates reunification with the mainland.

Ahead of her China visit, Ms von der Leyen delivered a scathing speech on EU-China relations, promising a shift which would amount to “derisking, not decoupling”.

Europe is heavily reliant on Chinese trade, including a 97 per cent dependency on minerals like lithium, a vital component in batteries needed for the much lauded greening of Europe’s economy.

"Preaching de-risking while marching ahead with business as usual is not an option,” warned Mr Landsbergis. “Surely we have learnt that increasing dependencies on totalitarian states weakens us as we discard the principles that made us strong."

Ms von der Leyen placed a now customary call into Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky just before boarding the plane to China.

“Ukraine will be an important topic of my meetings with President Xi and Premier Li,” she tweeted. “The EU wants a just peace that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

French business trip

Mr Macron, meanwhile, is taking along a horde of politicians and 53 French business leaders in the hope of signing up Chinese trade contracts. But EU diplomats told The Telegraph that they feel his top priority should be to use any influence he has to dissuade China from sending lethal weapons to Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine.

French paper Le Figaro has given Mr Macron the dubious moniker of "the tiger tamer" but says that, even with Ms von der Leyen in tow, "it is doubtful he will impress the tiger much".

Last November, German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Beijing visit was heavily criticised for being soft on China’s domestic human rights record and for its position on Russia’s war in Ukraine. Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish prime minister, has also just returned from China.

"There’s been such an array of EU leaders traipsing through China recently that it’s unclear whether the messages being given to Beijing are going to come across coherently," according Andrew Small, an expert at the German Marshall Fund.

"Macron and von der Leyen need to appear on the same page during this visit," he told The Telegraph.

After a March visit to Moscow, presidents Putin and Xi were keen to express how much they were on the same page, describing their positions on international and regional problems as “identical or very close”.