PARIS: Emmanuel Macron heads to China on Wednesday for a three-day state visit focusing on trade and diplomatic talks as the French president seeks to enlist Beijing in pressuring Russia toward a ceasefire with Ukraine.
Macron will advocate for an agenda of cooperation in economic and trade matters aimed at achieving a balance that ensures “sustainable, solid growth that benefits everyone,” his office said.
France is aiming to attract more investment from Chinese companies and facilitate market access for French exports. During the visit, officials from both nations are expected to sign several agreements in the energy, food industry, and aviation sectors.
Macron is committed to defend “fair and reciprocal market access,” his office said.
France will host the Group of Seven summit in 2026 involving the world’s most advanced economies, while China will chair the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, which includes the United States, South Korea, Japan, Australia, and Russia.
The 27-nation bloc runs a massive trade deficit with China — over 300 billion euros last year. China alone represents 46 percent of France’s total trade deficit.
France and the European Union have described China as a partner, competitor and systemic rival. Recent years have been marked by multiple trade disputes across a range of industries after the EU undertook a probe into Chinese electric vehicles subsidies. China responded with investigations into imports of European brandy, pork and dairy products.
In July, Macron welcomed exemptions for most cognac producers as a positive step. France is China’s first supplier of wine and spirits.
Macron’s talks with President Xi Jinping will also address Russia’s war in Ukraine, particularly following a meeting Monday in Paris with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss potential terms for a ceasefire.
“What we want ... is that China can convince and influence Russia to move toward a ceasefire as quickly as possible and consolidate that ceasefire through negotiations which, in our view, should lead to solid security guarantees for Ukraine,” a French top diplomatic official said.
Paris expects Beijing to “refrain from providing Russia with any means whatsoever to continue the war,” the official said, speaking anonymously in line with the French presidency customary practices.
China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said last week that Beijing believes in “dialogue and negotiation” to resolve Ukraine war and supports “all efforts” leading to peace. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, China “has played a constructive role in promoting a political resolution of the crisis,” she said.
Macron, who will be accompanied by his wife, Brigitte, is scheduled to arrive in Beijing on Wednesday evening, with plans to visit the 18th-century Qianlong Garden complex in the Forbidden City, which has been recently reopened to the public after a major renovation.
On Thursday, Macron will meet with Xi at the Great Hall of the People. Both leaders will then participate in a Franco-Chinese business forum. In the afternoon, Macron’s agenda includes talks with Zhao Leji, chairman of the National People’s Congress, and Chinese Premier Li Qiang.
The French presidential couple will then travel to Chengdu in China’s Sichuan province.
On Friday, Macron and Xi will have talks in Dujiangyan, on the site of one of the world’s oldest irrigation system. Macron will later meet with students from the Sichuan University.
Chengdu is also home to the Conservation and Research Center for the Giant Panda, where Yuan Meng, the first giant panda born in France who got his name by first lady Brigitte Macron, is now staying. France last month sent back to China a couple of star giant pandas who lived in the country for 13 years and gave birth to three cubs.
Macron heads to China for talks with Xi on trade ties and Russia’s war in Ukraine
https://arab.news/9q8pn
Macron heads to China for talks with Xi on trade ties and Russia’s war in Ukraine
- France and the European Union have described China as a partner, competitor and systemic rival
How a Syrian refugee chef met Britain’s King Charles
- Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace
LONDON: Pots clanged and oil sizzled inside the London kitchen of Syrian chef Imad Alarnab, as the former refugee who fled his country’s civil war recalled hosting King Charles III.
When the chef left his war-torn homeland in 2015, he never imagined that one day he would watch as cameras flashed and wide-eyed crowds greeted the monarch arriving at his Soho restaurant last year.
Alarnab, 48, said he had asked the king to come to the popular eatery when he met him at Buckingham Palace before an event honoring humanitarian work in 2023.
“I told him ‘I would love for you to visit our restaurant one day’ and he said: ‘I would love to’... I was over the Moon to be honest.”
The chef has come a long way since he arrived in London after an arduous journey from Damascus with virtually no money in his pocket.
Fearing for his life, he had escaped Syria after his family was uprooted again and again by fighting.
His culinary empire — restaurants, cafes, and juice bars peppered across the Syrian capital — had been destroyed by bombing in just six days in 2013.
Alarnab spent three months crisscrossing Europe in the back of lorries, aboard trains, on foot and even on a bicycle before he reached the UK.
“When I left, I left with nothing,” he told AFP, as waiters whirled past carrying steaming plates of traditional Syrian fare.
Starving and exhausted, he spent the last of his money on a train ticket to Doncaster where his sister lived.
“Love letter from Syria”
To make a living, Alarnab initially picked up any odd jobs, such as washing and selling cars, saving enough to bring his wife and three daughters over after seven months.
His love of cooking never left him though. In France, while he was sleeping on the steps of a church, Alarnab had often cooked for hundreds of other refugees.
“I always dreamed of going back to cooking,” he said.
So it wasn’t long before he found himself back in the kitchen, cooking up a storm across London with his sold-out supper clubs, bustling pop-up cafes, and crowded lunchtime falafel bars.
Alarnab’s friends gave him the initial boost for his first pop-up in 2017, and profits from his new catering business then covered the costs of later events.
He now runs two restaurants in the city — one in Soho’s buzzing Kingly Court and another nestled in a corner of the vibrant Somerset House arts center.
“I was looking for a city to love when I found London,” Alarnab said, adding it had offered him “space to innovate” and add his own modern twist to classic Syrian dishes.
Far from home, Alarnab said his word-of-mouth success had grown into a “love letter from Syria to the world” that needs no translation.
“You don’t really need to speak Arabic or Syrian to know that this is the best falafel ever,” he said, pointing to a row of colorful plates.
“There is hope”
For Alarnab, spices frying, dough rising and cheese melting inside a kitchen offered an unlikely escape from the real world.
“All my problems, I leave them outside the kitchen and walk in fresh.”
When he fled Syria, Alarnab thought going back to Damascus was forever off the table.
Yet he returned for the first time in October, almost a year to the day after longtime leader Bashar Assad was toppled in a lightning rebel offensive — ending almost 14 years of brutal civil war.
He walked the familiar streets of his old home, where his late mother taught him to cook many years ago.
“To return to Damascus and for her not to be there, that was extremely difficult.”
Torn between the two cities, Alarnab said he longed to one day rebuild his home in Damascus.
“I wish I could go back and live there. But at the same time, I feel like London is now a part of me. I don’t know if I could ever go back and just be in Syria,” he said.
Although Syrians still bear the scars of war, Alarnab said he had seen “hope in people’s eyes which was missing when I left in 2015.”
“The road ahead is still very long, and yes this is only the beginning — but there is hope.”
