President Emmanuel Macron was welcomed by Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, after arriving in Beijing last week.Credit...Pool photo by Ng Han Guan
PARIS — President Emmanuel Macron landed in China to a red-carpet reception and all the pomp of a state visit, a three-day tour little short of a love-fest that he clearly hoped would further his ambitions for France to sit at the table of the great powers in a world changed by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s emergence as an arbiter of global conflict.
But Mr. Macron’s reception on returning to Europe has been chilly.
Already embattled at home, facing huge weekly protests in the streets, he now finds himself excoriated abroad for what has been criticized as his naïveté — first with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whom he failed to dissuade from war after an intense courtship, and now with China’s president, Xi Jinping, who wants to drive a wedge between Europe and the United States and has warned of American “containment.”
The fallout from the China trip has left the French president more isolated than at any time in his six-year presidency, unpopular in France and mistrusted beyond it as he attempts to reshape not only his own country but also the foundations of whatever international order will emerge after the war in Ukraine.