China bristles at Macron linking Ukraine defence to Taiwan threats

31/5/2025 17:22

China on Saturday criticised as a "double standard" attempts to link the defence of Ukraine with the need to protect Taiwan from a Chinese invasion - a thinly veiled reference to a speech by French Emmanuel Macron in Singapore on Friday night.



As part of a broader address on the risks of division between China and the United States, Macron told the Shangri-La Dialogue defence meeting that if Russia was allowed to take any part of Ukraine without constraint then "what could happen in Taiwan?".



In a Facebook post, China's embassy in Singapore said that comparing the Taiwan issue with the Ukraine issue is "unacceptable".



"The two are different in nature and not comparable at all," the post said, saying that Taiwan was entirely an internal affair for China.



"If one tries to denounce a 'double standard' with a double standard, the only result we can get is still a double standard," the post said.



The embassy post did not mention Macron directly but it was accompanied by a photo of him talking at the event.



Beijing has previously dispatched defence ministers and other senior military officials to the annual meeting, which ends Sunday, but this year sent a relatively low-level delegation of military academics.