Xi tells Macron on camera: we are bosom friends/Zhiyin
China's full red-carpet publicity at home for the visiting French President.
Maybe COVID-19 made the past three years seem too long, but I can’t recall the last time a major Western leader got so much positive publicity in China as French President Emmanuel Macron does in the past three days.
Xinwen Lianbo, or News Simulcast, China’s most important daily prime-time news program by China Central Television (CCTV), published nine posts dedicated to Macron’s visit on its WeChat blog from Wednesday (April 5) to Friday (April 7), right since he descended from the plane in a red carpet.
CCTV uploaded the videos to YouTube, so you can access them quite conveniently. One of them shows President Xi Jinping and President Macron listening to traditional Chinese music with - apparently - profound connotation for the guest
CCTV says in the intro to the segment:
循着《高山流水》悠远婉转的琴声，习近平和马克龙来到白云厅，听千年古琴奏千年绝唱，品千年茶韵论千年兴替
Following the long and gentle sound of "High Mountain and Flowing Water", Xi Jinping and Macron came to Baiyun Hall to listen to the thousand-year Guqin[a traditional music instrument] play the thousand-year old music, and taste the fragrance of thousand-year tea and commenting on the rise and fall of the millennium.
Xi can be heard as saying clearly in the segment:
《高山流水》，千年古琴奏的是千年绝唱……高山流水盼知音呐……古代很优美的一个故事，俞伯牙和钟子期的故事……体现的是知音，只有知音才听得懂这个曲目
The "High Mountain and Flowing Water," thousand-year old music played by a thousand-year old Guqin[a traditional music instrument]..... A person expects a bosom friend, and they are in sync in the same way between high mountain and flowing water ...... it was a beautiful, ancient story, the story of Yu Boya and Zhong Ziqi ...... embodies the bosom friendship, only bosom friends can understand this music.
From Wikipedia:
The story about Zhiyin
Bo Ya was good at playing the qin. Zhong Ziqi was good at listening to the qin. When Bo Ya's will was towards high mountains in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, "How towering like Mount Tai!" When Bo Ya's will was towards flowing water in his playing, Zhong Ziqi would say, "How vast are the rivers and oceans!" Whatever Bo Ya thought of Ziqi would never fail to understand. Bo Ya said, "Amazing! Your heart and mine are the same!" After Zhong Ziqi died, Bo Ya broke his Guqin because he thought that no one else can understand his music.
Bo Ya's story with Zhong Ziqi generates the term Zhiyin (Chinese: 知音, original meaning: someone who knows music well), which from then on means close friends that can completely understand each other.
Here is another segment. You can’t hear either of the Presidents speak in the video, but just take a look and you know the atmosphere and narrative that CCTV aims to shape.
And also a segment of Macron meeting and speaking to students at Sun Yat-sun University in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong Province, with students lining up as if they were waiting for a rock star. (Macron’s young, energetic, and handsome image is apparently a big advantage in itself.)
With leading state media giving such high-profile, detailed, and positive publicity to Macron’s state visit, China’s mainstream discourse towards France has enjoyed a significant boost.
On the single issue that’s perhaps most dear to President Macron’s heart, there’s this
CCTV says in the intro to the segment:
习近平：中方愿同法方就政治解决乌克兰危机发出共同呼吁
Xi Jinping: China Ready to Issue a Joint Call with France for Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis
4月6日下午，国家主席习近平同法国总统马克龙举行会谈后共同会见记者。
On the afternoon of 6 April, President Xi Jinping held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and they met the press afterwards.
习近平表示，关于乌克兰危机，中方坚持劝和促谈、政治解决。中方愿同法方一道呼吁国际社会：
保持理性克制，避免采取使危机进一步恶化甚至失控的行动；
严格遵守国际人道法，避免袭击平民和民用设施，保护妇女、儿童等冲突受害者；
切实履行核武器用不得、核战争打不得的庄严承诺，反对在任何情况下使用生化武器，反对武装攻击核电站等民用核设施；
尽快重启和谈，按照联合国宪章宗旨和原则，兼顾各方合理安全关切，寻求政治解决，构建均衡、有效、可持续的欧洲安全框架；
合作应对乌克兰危机在粮食、能源、金融、交通等领域造成的外溢效应，减少乌克兰危机对世界特别是广大发展中国家的负面冲击。
President Xi reaffirmed China’s commitment to facilitating peace talks and political settlement on the Ukraine crisis. China stands ready to issue a joint call with France for the international community:
To stay rational, exercise restraint, and avoid taking actions that might cause the crisis to further deteriorate or even spiral out of control;
To strictly abide by international humanitarian law, avoid attacking civilians or civilian facilities, and protect women, children and other victims of the conflict;
To earnestly honor the solemn pledge that nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought, oppose the use of biological weapons under any circumstances, and oppose armed attacks against nuclear power plants or other civilian nuclear facilities;
To resume peace talks as soon as possible, observe the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, accommodate the legitimate security concerns of all parties, seek political settlement, and foster a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture; and
To jointly address the spillover effects of the Ukraine crisis in food, energy, finance, transportation and other fields, and reduce the negative impact of the Ukraine crisis on the world, especially on developing countries.
None of them go beyond China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis published on Feburary 24, 2022. (By the way, Beijing officially didn’t refer to it as a “peace plan.”)
To stay rational, exercise restraint, and avoid taking actions that might cause the crisis to further deteriorate or even spiral out of control
is not exactly a call for cease-fire, but could be legitimately understood as a stance against full-scale miliatry advancement?
To strictly abide by international humanitarian law, avoid attacking civilians or civilian facilities, and protect women, children and other victims of the conflict;
Given that the war takes place on Ukrainian soil and the Russian bombardment of Ukrainian cities and infrastructure, I see no other rational explanation but a call for Russia to stop attacking civillian facilities in Ukraine.
To earnestly honor the solemn pledge that nuclear weapons must not be used and nuclear wars must not be fought, oppose the use of biological weapons under any circumstances, and oppose armed attacks against nuclear power plants or other civilian nuclear facilities;
Nuclear weapons and biological weapons are what the West fears Moscow would resort to. Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station has been captured by Russia.
To resume peace talks as soon as possible, observe the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, accommodate the legitimate security concerns of all parties, seek political settlement, and foster a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture;
This is perhaps what the Europeans don’t want to hear, as “legitimate security concerns of all parties" is understood in the West as Beijing echoing Moscow's grievance against the eastward expansion of NATO despite the European nations making their respective, sovereign decision to join the bloc.
To jointly address the spillover effects of the Ukraine crisis in food, energy, finance, transportation and other fields, and reduce the negative impact of the Ukraine crisis on the world, especially on developing countries.
Guess nobody in the world is against this, except Beijing’s insistence in the term “crisis” instead of “war,” much less “invasion” or “aggression.”
China and France also issued a 51-point(!) joint declaration [Chinese] [French], including
1. France and China will maintain annual meetings between the two Heads of State.
2. France and China emphasize the importance of high-level exchanges, their strategic dialogue, their high-level economic and financial dialogue and their high-level dialogue on human exchanges in promoting the development of their bilateral cooperation, and agree to hold a new session of these dialogues before the end of the year.
3. France and China reaffirm their willingness to continue to develop their close and solid strategic partnership on the basis of mutual respect for their sovereignty, territorial integrity and major interests.
4. France and China agree to deepen exchanges on strategic issues and in particular to deepen the dialogue between the Southern Theater of the Chinese People's Liberation Army and the Command of French Forces in the Asia-Pacific Area (ALPACI), in order to strengthen mutual understanding of regional and international security issues.
5. China, in the year of the 20th anniversary of the establishment of the China-EU comprehensive strategic partnership, reaffirms its commitment to the development of EU-China relations, encourages high-level exchanges in order to promote convergence of views on strategic issues, enhance human exchanges, jointly address global challenges and promote economic cooperation in a proactive and balanced manner. France, as a member state of the European Union, shares these orientations and will contribute to them.
maybe this is about Huawei?
…In the field of digital economy, including 5G, the French side undertakes to continue the fair and non-discriminatory treatment of license applications from Chinese enterprises on the basis of the laws and regulations including national security of both countries.
Talking about Huawei, the Chinese telecommunication equipment vendor - and Tencent - were namechecked by President Xi Jinping as leading technology companies in Guangdong Province, China’s largest provincial economy where Xi and Macron met after Beijing.
In video broadcasted by Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV (live streaming on YouTube) Xi was heard as saying:
我说的（广东）领头羊的作用不仅是它的总量大、速度快，而是要发展——高质量发展，就是我们的先进产业、高端技术要在这里大发展……就是包括，像我们的华为、腾讯，这样的一些电子、智能的企业，都在这一带。
I said (Guangdong) playing the role of the leader is not only its large economic size and fast development speed, but high-quality development. That is, our advanced industries, high-end technology to should develop bigly here ...... Such as Huawei and Tencent, some of these electronic, intelligent enterprises, are in this area.
A Chinese-language report by Radio France Internationale, apparently not refercing the video from Phoenix TV, also documented the comment.
The endorsement of Huawei isn’t exactly a big surprise, given China’s firm opposition of the U.S. crackdown and Beijing going to bat for Sabrina Wanzhou Meng, but Tencent did see its stock price tumble in the past two years. Upon a bit of search, Xi actually visited Tencent in December 2012 soon after taking the office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee General Secretary and Central Military Commission Chairman.
