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French leader Macron says he was \u2018very touched\u2019 by Xi\u2019s gesture to accompany him to Chengdu \u2013 a departure from protocol.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Chinese President Xi Jinping and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have pledged deeper cooperation on global issues, as the two leaders met ahead of France\u2019s hosting of the Group of Seven (G7) summit next year.<\/p>\n Xi hosted Macron on Friday in the southwestern city of Chengdu, state media said, in a rare instance of the head of the world\u2019s second-largest economy accompanying a guest beyond the capital, Beijing.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n As Macron wrapped up his three-day visit to China, he and his wife, Brigitte, met the Chinese presidential couple for lunch in a more relaxed setting compared with the previous day.<\/p>\n Macron began his day in Chengdu on Friday by surprising fellow joggers in the city\u2019s Jincheng Lake Park, videos circulating on Chinese social media showed, before joining Xi at the Dujiangyan dam, state media reported. The dam has managed water flows around Chengdu since the 3rd century BC.<\/p>\n Macron said he was \u201cvery touched\u201d by Xi\u2019s gesture, a departure from official protocol, after he hosted Xi in the Pyrenees in May 2024, a place where Macron spent time as a child.<\/p>\n These are all signs of mutual trust and a desire to \u201cact together\u201d at a time when international tensions are rising and trade imbalances are widening to China\u2019s advantage, he said.<\/p>\n In an interview with Al Jazeera, Andy Mok of Beijing\u2019s Center for China and Globalization, said that the visit highlights the importance of promoting \u201ctrade cooperation\u201d between France and China, but also between greater Europe and China.<\/p>\n On Thursday, the two leaders had met at the more solemn Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where tough discussions on ending the Russian invasion of Ukraine and international trade took place.<\/p>\n Macron has been seeking to involve Beijing in pressuring Russia towards a ceasefire with Ukraine after a recent burst of diplomacy around a United States-led peace plan.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are facing the risk of the disintegration of the international order that brought peace to the world for decades, and in this context, the dialogue between China and France is even more essential than ever,\u201d Macron said on Thursday.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that China will join our call, our efforts to achieve, as soon as possible, at the very least a ceasefire in the form of a moratorium on strikes targeting critical infrastructure,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Xi did not respond to France\u2019s call, but said that \u201cChina supports all efforts that work towards peace\u201d and called for a peace deal that all parties will accept.<\/p>\n China has provided\u00a0strong diplomatic support\u00a0to Russia since its invasion of Ukraine, and has also extended an economic lifeline through increased trade.<\/p>\n A meeting between Xi and Macron in Beijing on Thursday produced 12 cooperation agreements covering topics like population ageing, nuclear energy and panda conservation.<\/p>\n No monetary amounts were disclosed, though Macron is being accompanied for his fourth state visit to China by the heads of some of France\u2019s most prominent companies.<\/p>\n On Friday, the two nations signed an agreement on the sanitary and phytosanitary requirements for exports of French alfalfa to China, state broadcaster CCTV said. The two countries also made \u201cimportant progress\u201d in registering French pig white viscera exporters for trade with China, CCTV added.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, in Chengdu, China\u2019s fourth-largest city with 21 million inhabitants and considered one of the most culturally and socially open in China, Macron will meet with students.<\/p>\n Brigitte Macron, for her part, will visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where two 17-year-old pandas, loaned to France in 2012 as part of China\u2019s \u201cpanda diplomacy\u201d, have just returned.<\/p>\n There, she will meet Yuan Meng, the first giant panda born in France in 2017, to whom she is \u201cGodmother\u201d, and who arrived in China in 2023.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n French leader Macron says he was \u2018very touched\u2019 by Xi\u2019s gesture to accompany him to Chengdu \u2013 a departure from protocol. Chinese President Xi Jinping and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have pledged deeper cooperation on global issues, as the two leaders met ahead of France\u2019s hosting of the Group of Seven (G7) summit next […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4402,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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