As Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in France for a state visit on May 5, China’s CGTN TV network interviewed “Karel Vereycken, a political analyst and contributor for the Schiller Institute in Paris,” with questions on prospective and historical China-France relations.
Its first question: “France was the first major Western power to establish diplomatic ties with China 60 years ago. How would you characterize the consensus underpinning the bilateral relations over the past decades?”
Vereycken explained: “At that time de Gaulle was building an independent France and at the same time trying to create an independent Europe through a policy of entente, détente and cooperation. Sovereignty was the consensus, shared by France and China, of multilateralism and the refusal to be part of confrontational blocs.
