'Unacceptable': China slams Macron for comparing Taiwan issue to Ukraine war

China slammed comments made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who compared Beijing’s dispute over Taiwan to that of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. The remarks from the French leader came during his speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue security conference in Singapore on Friday night.

Macron warned that the 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 at the event.

Shortly after Macron’s remarks, China’s embassy in Singapore condemned his comments and denounced it. “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.”

Chinese aggression at the centre of Shangri-La Dialogue

Interestingly, Macron’s remarks against China came a day after U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told the Shangri-La forum on Friday that a threat from China in Asia could be “imminent.”

“There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent,” Hegseth said. Any Chinese military move on Taiwan “would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,” he added during his address at the summit.

Meanwhile, 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 led to the death of 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 credibility in the rest of the world,” Macron said.