Europe must reduce its dependency on the United States and avoid getting dragged into a confrontation between China and the US over Taiwan, France's President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview on his plane back from a three-day state visit to China.
Speaking with Politico and two French journalists after spending about six hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping during his trip, Macron emphasized his pet theory of "strategic autonomy" for Europe, presumably led by France, to become a "third great power."
He mentioned that the "great risk" that Europe faces is that it "gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy," while traveling from Beijing to Guangzhou, in southern China, on board COTAM Unité, France’s Air Force One.
Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party have enthusiastically endorsed Macron's concept of strategic autonomy, and Chinese officials constantly refer to it in their dealings with European countries.
“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron said in the interview.
“The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction,” The French preident stated.
Just hours after his flight left Guangzhou for Paris, China launched major military exercises around the autonomous island of Taiwan, which China claims as its territory but which the US has promised to arm and defend.
Beijing has repeatedly threatened invasion in recent years and has a policy of isolating the democratic island by forcing other countries to recognize it as part of "one China".
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