French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Beijing for a three-day state visit likely to focus on trade and technology rivalries.
Macron’s trip is part of a European push — the European Commission president went in the summer; Germany’s and Britain’s leaders are due early next year — to reduce tensions with the world’s second-biggest economy, but few concrete deals are expected.
Brussels will this week unveil plans to reduce reliance on China for rare earths, and is mulling setting “Made-in-Europe” requirements for products such as cars, but in reality it faces an uphill challenge. “This is not a choice between good, bad, and ugly outcomes,” a leading analyst said. “It is about degrees of bad and ugly.”