Having pushed through a law that raised the retirement age from 62 to 64, and faced with retaliatory trade union strikes and street riots the likes of which that Paris has not seen since May 1968, French President Emmanuel Macron found it convenient to leave his country to visit Beijing this week, accompanied by EU Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen. While Von der Leyen voiced her concerns about Chinese trade practices and the invasion of Ukraine, Macron’s agenda was rather different. It was both to promote Franco-Chinese economic cooperation and to reassert yet again his neo-Gaullist theme of European...