HONG KONG — Derided by concerned observers from Washington to Brussels, French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent trip to China did not go down well with allies. But he left his hosts feeling delighted.
Hundreds of cheering people were waiting to greet Macron when he arrived in the southern Chinese metropolis of Guangzhou this month, part of a high-profile state visit.
“He saw us and came right up to us and shook our hands who stood in the front row,” said Qiao Jiabao, a financial journalism student at Sun Yat-sen University, where Macron gave a speech. “I felt he was very gracious and proactive, even though we didn’t speak the same language,” Qiao told NBC News.
He said he and his friends joked that Macron, who has faced mass protests in France over his unpopular plan to raise the retirement age, had been treated so well in China that he might not want to go home.
When Macron returned to France, he faced another storm of criticism, this time over an interview in which he suggested that Europe should resist being drawn into a conflict over Taiwan and focus on “strategic autonomy” independent from both the United States and China. READ MORE...
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