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EU: Macron seeks united EU front on China

By  |  March 24, 2019

France’s Emmanuel Macron declared the “time of European naïveté” towards China was over as Xi Jinping was hosted  in Rome, reported the Financial Times. Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Monaco on the French Riviera Sunday (March 24) seeking to press ambitious commercial goals.

Speaking after a meeting of European heads of state in Brussels, the French president said he welcomed plans to toughen rules for Chinese investments and efforts to amend EU antitrust rules to facilitate mergers between large European groups amid mounting concerns over Beijing’s global ambitions.

“The time of European naïveté is ended,” Mr Macron said on Friday. “For many years we had an unco-ordinated approach and China took advantage of our divisions.”

One senior EU diplomat said discussions over China produced a “largely consensual assessment” of how to tackle concerns ranging from Beijing’s restrictions on European corporate investment to security fears over the use of Chinese technology in communications networks.

Full Content: Financial Times

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