China denounced comments by French President Emmanuel Macron comparing Beijing’s dispute over Taiwan to Moscow’s aggression in Ukraine.
Macron had made the link in a speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore Friday night, warning that unchecked Russian aggression in Ukraine could set a precedent in Asia.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin could take Ukrainian territory “without any restrictions, without any constraints … what could happen in Taiwan? What will you do the day something happens in the Philippines?” Macron said.
“Comparing the Taiwan question with the Ukraine issue is unacceptable,” China’s embassy in Singapore said in a Facebook post on Saturday. “The two are different in nature, and not comparable at all,” the embassy added, accusing Macron of a “double standard.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Shangri-La forum on Friday that a threat from China in Asia could be “imminent.” Any Chinese military move on Taiwan “would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,” Hegseth said.
Macron also warned that Europe’s credibility was at stake over the perception it had given a “free pass” to Israel, which has brought Gaza to the brink of famine and killed more than 50,000 civilians since October 2023.
“If we abandon Gaza, if we consider there is a free pass for Israel, even if we do condemn the terrorist attacks, we kill our own credibility in the rest of the world,” Macron said.
