cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/42954242
French President Emmanuel Macron should privately and publicly stress the importance of human rights in Sino-French relations during his visit to China from December 3 to 5, 2025, Human Rights Watch said today. Macron’s visit is one of several top-level engagements between European and Chinese leaders amid the complex and shifting geopolitical relationships among Europe, China, and the United States.
President Macron should signal his commitment to taking concrete action in response to deepening repression by China. Key issues include
- labor rights abuses in China’s supply chains;
- commercial drones produced by China-based companies being used by Russia to attack civilians in Ukraine;
- and China’s use of transnational repression to target critics abroad, including in France.
“China’s disregard for human rights has important implications for France, from weapons used in unlawful Russian attacks in Ukraine to abusive supply chains that hinders fair competition for European industries,” said Bénédicte Jeannerod, France director at Human Rights Watch. “Macron should break the silos between human rights and other issues and show leadership by including rights concerns in high-level policy discussions with China.”
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A French President, telling anotherleader to fly straight to their face? Not very likely!
It would require two big balls of adamantium, which I think he lacks.
macron will probably just talk about trade deals and ignore the human rights stuff like most western leaders do when they visit china, they always say theyll bring it up but then nothing happens, china has been doing this stuff for years and europe keeps doing business with them anyway, the drone thing is especially messed up though chinese companies selling drones to russia that kill ukrainian civilians and we just keep trading with them, its all about money at the end of the day, human rights are just something they mention in press releases to make themselves look good,
i doubt macron will actually do anything concrete about it, he might say something vague about being concerned but wont actually take action that would hurt trade relations, the supply chain labor abuses are also a huge issue but nobody wants to pay more for stuff so they look the other way, transnational repression is scary too china going after critics even when theyre in france, but yeah macron will probably just shake hands, sign some deals, and come home without really addressing any of this, same old story
