Xi Jinping travels to Europe in a bid to sustain ties with Russia

The UK was part of the European Union, Trump was facing abuse of power charges in Congress, and COVID-19 had yet to appear. Then Xi Jinping made his last visit to Europe. The Chinese president will tour Europe on Sunday to protect the country's alliance with Russia.

The tour will take him to France, Kiev's main supporter in Europe, as well as Hungary and Serbia, the two EU members with the least deference to Moscow. This is Xi Jinping's first visit to Europe after the Asian giant was cut off from the world for almost three years following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese leader hopes his trip will serve to reopen and deepen economic ties with Europe in order to ease ongoing tensions with the United States, and reaffirm his position of support for Russia.

The tour will also serve as a platform for China to air its grievances over European scrutiny of its trade practices. The war in Ukraine will be a top priority for France, which this year marks 60 years of diplomatic relations with China.

As China is one of Russia's most important partners, French President Emmanuel Macron, according to the document issued by the Elysee Palace, wants to encourage China to use its influence with Moscow to change Russia's calculations and help resolve the conflict.

The talks began when Macron visited China last year. At that meeting, the French leader urged Xi Jinping to "make Russia see reason". Some time later, the Chinese president called his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodimir Zelensky, for the first time since the conflict began in February 2022. With China's economy facing headwinds and the United States closing in on Chinese companies, the European Union may have some leverage over Beijing.

But the bloc's 27 members are clearly inconsistent, undermining China's ability to shape its thinking, experts say. The visit comes two years after Moscow launched a military operation in Ukraine and was overshadowed by European concerns about China's support for Russia's war economy.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian said President Xi Jinping's visit would "stabilise the development of China-Europe relations and make new contributions to world peace and stability". "But China will not move on Ukraine," he stressed.

"If Europeans expect China to impose sanctions on Russia or join the United States and Europe in imposing economic sanctions on Russia, I think it is unlikely," said Ding Chun, director of the Centre for European Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai.

But a French diplomatic source confirmed to AFP that the Asian giant was "the only international actor capable of exerting sufficient influence" on Moscow. Paris considers that a sufficiently important reason. France will put China's support for Russia on the table, and "it will not be a pleasant conversation", predicted Abigaël Vasselier, an analyst at the Mercator China Institute.

Regarding the visits by Hungary and Serbia, the meeting will coincide with the 25th anniversary of the NATO bombings of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, when the Transatlantic Alliance acted against the former Yugoslavia in the midst of the Kosovo war.

For Wang Yiwei, director of the Centre for European Union Studies at China's Renmin University, this will provide the perfect springboard for Putin's trip to Beijing, where the newly renewed Russian president can reiterate that "NATO is a threat to international security".