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Opinion | To gauge France’s South China Sea intentions, look at what it does, not what it does not say
- With his China visit, French President Macron won trade deals and climate cooperation and shored up European Union interests
- His silence on the South China Sea, however, does not mean France will stop trying to curb China’s influence or end arms sales to its rivals
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As he scrambled to help French businesses win lucrative contracts and protect the European Union’s commercial interests ahead of a possible solution to the trade war between China and the United States, President Emmanuel Macron of France was careful not to publicly raise objections to Chinese policy in the South China Sea during his recent trip to Shanghai and Beijing.
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Unsurprisingly, a French declaration released at the end of Macron’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on November 6 made no mention of the contested waters.
The Chinese had warned the French president not to touch upon the issue. Zhu Jing, deputy director of European affairs at the Chinese foreign ministry, said on November 5 that France should not play “a disruptive” role in the Indo-Pacific or send warships into Beijing-claimed territorial waters.
But France has toughened rhetoric against China’s moves in the South China Sea in recent years, and are playing a game east of Suez that basically matches the US Indo-Pacific strategy – a euphemism for containment of China.
The French navy deploys assets in the South China Sea an average of three to four times a year. China says it has historical rights to vast swathes of the resource-rich area, which is also a vital shipping route, but Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines dispute such claims.
France also sent the frigate Vendémiaire to the sensitive Taiwan Strait in April, leading to Chinese protests. Paris replied that its vessels would regularly sail in the region to reaffirm commitment to international maritime law.
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