The most powerful dictator in the world, Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), is visiting Europe, making three stops.
China’s objective for Europe is clear: Ensure that Europe would not put up strong resistance in the form of EU sectoral sanctions to Chinese hostilities against democracies in East Asia, such as Taiwan, Japan or the Philippines. French, Hungarian and Serbian leaders would be helping him out, because of their questionable strategies, local corruption needs and general ignorance of global security. Despite European economic and political stability depending on peace in the Taiwan Strait, many European leaders are doing nothing to deter China’s aggression and are instead feeding the Chinese war machine.
Driven by anti-Americanism, a hurt ego as a former superpower, a naive appeasement strategy and the greed of several French companies, French President Emmanuel Macron would again kneel to the Chinese president. He would make a few nice speeches about principles, but instead of pressuring China with EU sectoral sanctions to force it to stop its support of the Russian war, he would cheer another set of dirty money contracts. This would deepen European economic dependence on the will of the Chinese Communist Party instead of decreasing it, which is the EU policy of de-risking.
Macron might again throw other democracies under the bus to please Xi and damage the transatlantic alliance even more, like he did after his last trip to Beijing. As an example, France is happy to sell military-use helicopters to China, which can be used to transport Chinese solders to butcher Taiwanese defenders, the scenario Beijing is systematically preparing for.
France knows about the Chinese war build-up and still signs large contracts boosting Chinese military capabilities. It is no surprise that France is actively sabotaging NATO efforts to cooperate with Japan, a regional democratic leader in the Indo-Pacific and a natural ally of Europe.
Why is Macron doing it? There are only two options: Either it is a part of his dirty deal with the Chinese president (France blocks NATO cooperation with Japan in exchange for Chinese contracts for French companies) or it is just pure appeasement — a failed strategy France did on Russia for years until it completely collapsed and enabled the Russian war in Ukraine, since Moscow interpreted it as European weakness.
In Serbia, President Aleksandar Vucic, a known puppet of Russia, would be asking for more dirty Chinese money. He is happy to sell out Serbian sovereignty by allowing more Chinese police (effectively Chinese intelligence) into Serbia to give them an entry point to Europe. Serbia already serves as a Russian and Chinese intelligence base against other Balkan states, so Vucic would just be re-kissing the ring of Xi. With Serbia having no real chance of getting into EU or NATO, its usefulness for Chinese geopolitical plans is limited.
Loyal Russian servant Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is the best ally of Chinese communists in Europe, already speaking and voting on their behalf in the EU. Hungary serves as a Russian and Chinese intelligence base for wider Central Europe. It hosts many Chinese espionage cover organizations, such as a branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (led by a senior China-affiliated spy) and the largest Huawei research and development branch outside China. Orban would happily allow more Chinese police (meaning Chinese intelligence) inside this NATO member state and beg for more dirty money contracts for the Belgrade-Budapest railway to fund oligarchs and proxies.
Jakub Janda is the Director of European Values Center for Security, headquartered in Prague. It is so far the only European think tank with a permanent office in Taiwan.
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