https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-xi-macron-romance-and-big-nukes/
China’s president Xi wound up his five-day European tour just as an emperor should, with a red carpet welcome and full military honors in Budapest.
The Hungarians, known Euro-contrarians, welcomed Xi’s pledge to invest billions to build an EV plant in Hungary, and didn’t bat an eye when told it meant they now belonged to China’s imperialist Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi’s trip went better than expected. France’s president Emmanuel Macron, whom I call “Little Cookie” for reasons you will find fully explained in my new book on France, Raising Olives in Provence, backed away from his aggressive statements about China’s unacceptable economic takeover of Europe.
Instead of berating Xi, he took the Chinese dictator to a childhood haunt in the Pyrenees, thinking perhaps he was Donald Trump, who gave Xi the Mar-a-Lago treatment when the two first met in May 2017. He was left to beg Xi to reduce the huge trade imbalance between China and the EU ($314.72 billion in 2023), or else – or else, nothing.
Macron could make no credible threat of tariffs, because he doesn’t yet speak for the EU, although on most days he thinks he does.
Little Cookie and Xi could agree on one thing, however: Both would like to end American “hegemony,” and see both the EU and China play larger roles on the world stage.
