This story originally appeared in The Guardian.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, has fired the starting pistol on a three-day visit to China by giving his host, Xi Jinping, a horse called Vesuvius.
The eight-year-old gelding recruited from France’s presidential cavalry corps represented “an unprecedented diplomatic gesture”, Reuters quoted the French presidency as saying.
“It mattered a lot for the president, even if it was very complicated to import a horse for sanitary reasons,” one official said. “It’s a symbol of French excellence.”
Macron’s tour of Xi’an and Beijing is designed to boost ties between the two nations as Paris emerges as a key Chinese partner in Europe following Britain’s decision to abandon the European Union.
In a glowing interview with Chinese state media before his arrival, Macron said: “China is a country that fascinates me, like so many French people … [it is] the oldest living civilisation – a ‘state older than history’, as General de Gaulle once said.”
Chinese experts praised Macron’s decision to give the Middle Kingdom his horse, a move apparently inspired by the Chinese tradition of “panda diplomacy”, when Beijing bestows the black-and-white Sichuan natives upon its friends.
“He really respects Chinese history,” enthused Ding Yifan, a France expert from the China Development Research Centre, a state-backed thinktank.
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