European Council president Charles Michel will travel to Beijing for a meeting with Xi Jinping next month, in a move likely to highlight European divisions on how to engage with China.Michel, who represents the EU’s 27 leaders, will visit Beijing on December 1 to meet Xi and other senior Chinese officials, two people with knowledge of the decision told the Financial Times, the first time an EU president has met Xi in China since 2018.
The meeting will follow a strategic discussion among EU leaders last month on how to adjust the bloc’s relationship with China in light of Xi’s increasingly hardline policies and deepening rivalry between Washington and Beijing.
Proponents of what one of the people described as a meeting involving the “full-blown red carpet treatment” said it was part of efforts to keep lines of communication open to China despite the rising tension with western capitals.