Senior U.S. officials like to offset their frequent criticisms of China by saying they seek to compete with Beijing when necessary and cooperate “in areas of shared interest.”
While areas of competition are quite evident, finding “shared interests” is proving to be far more challenging — even on pressing shared issues like climate change and transnational crime.
But the folks in Washington, and to some extent in London as well, may want to pay close attention to this week’s summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron.
Xi, of course, arrived in Paris on Sunday, the first leg of a European tour. The war in Ukraine, trade imbalances and industrial subsidies will all be prominent topics of discussion. The talks will no doubt be contentious at times, given how sensitive these issues are in Europe today.
But it’s also quite likely that Xi and Macron are going to resume their 2022 conversation about trilateral aid efforts in Africa. Back then, the two leaders agreed to work together to build $1.7 billion worth of infrastructure projects on the continent.
Chinese and French companies also work far more collaboratively in Africa than China does with firms from any other G7 country. Private French companies and Chinese state-owned enterprises built West Africa’s largest port in Nigeria and are now building the controversial new East Africa Crude Oil Pipeline in Uganda, among numerous other projects.
The initiatives at the private and public levels demonstrate that cooperation between rivals is still possible even in these strained, contested times. It sets up an interesting contrast with France’s G7 counterparts, where opportunities for collaboration seem to be fading rapidly.
