Xi Jinping visits Europe with a program of events that is a manifesto about what he thinks about the continent. His first visit is to France, because Emmanuel Macron can always get a statement that is discordant with Washington and there is nothing that makes him happier than seeing that the West speaks with several voices. He then moves to Serbia, where he commemorates, together with autocrat Alexander Vucic, the 25th anniversary of the mistaken bombing of his embassy in Belgrade by NATO.
China compensates for Serbia's warmth with investments and infrastructure, as it also does with Hungary, Xi's final destination in Europe. There she will spend three days with Viktor Orbán, a man who has made it his goal to delegitimize liberal Europe.
Hungary and Serbia are Russia's friends in the invasion of Ukraine, as is China. Macron and Ursula Von der Leyen have asked Xi to help them contain Vladimir Putin. But he's not going to do it. China is a crucial support for Russia, supplying it with components and machinery for its war industry.
For Xi Jinping, Europe is a battlefield in which he competes for hegemony with the United States and where he has illiberal democracies as allies, which he sees as legitimate as the governments that emerge from elections. Xi is not fooling anyone. The general secretary of the CCP truly believes that the State should be the main actor in the economy, that the market must be limited and that individual freedoms are secondary. He thinks that the US is in decline and distrusts its model, based on consumption and services.
From the Anglo-Saxon world the idea is spreading that China has reached its peak. But that may be a mistake. China's power is irreversible, systemic, military and technological.
Xi Jinping wants Europe not to close the doors to its exports. Not like the US, with whom he maintains a trade war. China needs to sell its electric cars and solar technology, sectors in which it dominates but suffers from overproduction. China warns that protectionism is not good for anyone. That there is room for everyone. But that's not entirely true. For it to be so, China must open its markets. And give security guarantees to Europe that it is not in a position to do right now.
