China must “contribute significantly more” to the humanitarian aid provided by the UN to Palestinian civilians, the French presidency said on Monday after a call between Emmanuel Macron and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. To date, Beijing’s support for the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) “is extremely limited, on the order of approximately one million dollars per year, and we therefore encourage at the highest level Chinese authorities to do much more,” the Élysée told journalists.
Paris also calls on Beijing, “which is more or less the first trading partner of each country in the Middle East”, to “also be able to use this influence in order to avoid any escalation” in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas. According to Chinese state television, the two leaders “exchanged views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and both believe that the top priority is to avoid further deterioration of the situation between Palestine and Israel, especially to avoid a more serious humanitarian crisis.
“Strong relationship with Iran”
The call between the two men, who met in April in Beijing and Canton during a state visit by President Macron, comes a few days before a trip by French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna in the Chinese capital. She will arrive in Beijing on Thursday evening and will hold a joint press conference with her counterpart Wang Yi on Friday.
The international community must “act urgently” to put an end to the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza, the latter declared on Monday to diplomats from Arab and Muslim-majority countries, who also came to Beijing. “China is an actor that weighs more than before in the region”, and it “has a strong relationship with Iran”, notes a French diplomatic source. “The first thing we expect from China is to join its efforts with ours to ensure that we avoid any regional escalation,” we add, ensuring that we believe that diplomatic exchanges between Paris and Beijing can have “an impact” in this sense.
“Feeding the scope” of Russian aggression
Furthermore, the French president expressed to his Chinese counterpart his “deep concern” about the “military cooperation that has been announced” between Russia and North Korea. “We hope that China realizes to what extent this is a problematic development for France and the entire European Union, it would naturally lead to fueling the scope of this Russian aggression” against Ukraine, added the presidency French with some journalists.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un traveled to the Russian Far East in September, where he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This meeting was followed by several arms deliveries, according to Seoul, which estimates that North Korea provided a million shells to Russia for its war in Ukraine, in exchange for know-how in space technologies. “The concern is mainly North Korean at this stage, since it was they who announced during Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia that there was a kind of real desire to move forward on cooperation military”, explained Emmanuel Macron’s entourage.
“Create the conditions for negotiations”
At the end of a state visit by the French president to China in April, Paris affirmed that Xi Jinping, close ally of Vladimir Putin, had said he was ready to work with France “to create the conditions for negotiations” between Moscow and Kiev. Shortly after, the Chinese leader spoke on the telephone with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which was seen on the French side as a positive result of Emmanuel Macron’s visit. Seven months later, however, the situation has not really changed.
“The goal obviously remains to have a Chinese position which leads us to have an outcome both within the framework of the objectives set by the Ukrainians and within the framework of international law,” added a French advisor.