The French president, Emmanuel Macron, asked to “preserve an order based on the law” in a global context of “great imbalances”, this Monday, May 26 in Vietnam, the first stage of his tour in Southeast Asia.
“In a time of great imbalances and the return of the speech of powers or intimidation,” the international order “requires that we act together to preserve an order based on the law, a sine qua non -all condition to all prosperity,” said the manager, during a statement to the press along with his Vietnamesa counterpart Luong Cuong, En Hanoi.
Nuclear, transport, satellites … 13 agreements signed between the two countries
The leader presented France as a reliable alternative to Vietnam, reached between Washington, which threatens to impose a prohibitive surcharge in its exports for the US market, and Beijing, its long -standing ally with which Hanoi shares territorial disputes in the southern China Sea.
These problems will accompany Emmanuel Macron during his visit to Southeast Asia, with planned stops in Indonesia and Singapore this week. Sunday night arrived in Hanoi with his wife Brigitte Macron, the leader insisted on the common vision shared with Vietnam, a country of one hundred million inhabitants with dynamic growth, which shares a often painful colonial past with Paris.
Thirteen agreements were signed on Monday, particularly in nuclear energy, a crucial sector for the Asian country, depending on fossil fuels, which seeks to meet the growing needs of its population, as well as in transport and satellites.
The low-cost Vietjet airline has also announced to order 20 large airbus A330-900 aircraft, which are added to a first similar contract of 20 planes that are spent last year with the European aeronautical giant.
“In fact, it is a new page that is written between our two countries (…) a will to write an even more ambitious page of the relationship between Vietnam and France, between ASEAN and the European Union,” Emmanuel Macron insisted.
New Airbus command
After a tribute in the morning in memory of the combatants of the Indochina War that he fought from 1946 to 1954 against France, by Independence, Emmanuel Macron met his homologous Vietnamese Luong Cuong.
The Head of State, of which it is the first visit to Vietnam, must be received later by the Secretary General of the Communist Party to Lam, which he himself received in Paris in October.
Sensitive subjects mentioned behind closed doors
The leader of the party, with whom he will have lunch in the temple of literature, a monument dedicated to Confucius and an emblematic place of the Vietnamese culture, is considered the most powerful leader in the country, where rights organizations denounce a greater repression of any critical voice of power.
Human Rights Watch warned Emmanuel Macron from a letter last week, asking him to “publicly” press “the Vietnamese government to” free all those detained for having exercised their rights to freedom of expression, association, religion and meeting. “
Such arrest is not in the uses of the French president who regularly claims to evoke these chamber sensitive issues. Especially because in Vietnam, Elysée expects to “strengthen cooperation in strategic sectors such as energy, transport and defense.” And the Head of State intends to hammer his offer of “Third Way” to this country of the Asian Pacific, particularly exposed to the non-American competition.
“Vietnam is really on the first line of all the tensions that grow in the South China Sea,” where Beijing is becoming more and more offensive in its territorial claims, slides a senior official of French diplomacy.
But it is also in all negotiations to try to escape the strong customs tax of 46% imposed and then suspended by Donald Trump, while the United States is the largest export market in the Vietnamese manufacturing industry.
A test for the “Indapacific Strategy” of Macron
It was established in 2018, already praised in multiple trips to India, the Pacific Ocean or the Indian Ocean, the “Indo -Pacific Strategy” of Emmanuel Macron consists in proposing a third way to the countries of the region. And according to Paris, she finds all her relevance since Donald Trump’s return to the White House with her commercial war threats.
In a more or less subliminal way, the French president should have a message for everyone. For the US President, defending the “rules of international trade” instead of the “Jungla” law, according to one of his advisors. For his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, whom he called before his departure to guarantee “fair competition”, marking that France is a “respectful” partner of “sovereignty” of the countries of the region.
And also for Russian President Vladimir Putin, affirming countries like Vietnam or Indonesia, he addressed Moscow for a long time, in particular for their armaments, but who seek to diversify their suppliers, that Russia, for the war he fought in Ukraine with the support of North Korea soldiers, “destabilizes Asia” and not just Europe.
In Vietnam, this “power of power” position can find an echo: the country itself is careful to maintain a certain balance in its relations with China and the United States, to maximize its commercial interests, in line with its “bamboo diplomacy.”
Source: BFM TV
