Pandas and ping-pong as screaming students give Macron rockstar greeting in China

By Sam DAVIES
Chengdu, China (AFP) Dec 5, 2025

Surrounded by security, French President Emmanuel Macron made his way through crowds of young fans screaming in excitement at a university in southern China on Friday, receiving a greeting more reminiscent of a rockstar than a politician.

Hundreds of students and local residents lined up outside a university sports hall in the city of Chengdu to welcome Macron, some waiting hours for the president's arrival.

"I'm very happy and honoured that he has come to Chengdu and our Sichuan University," 21-year old material sciences student Ye Maoxuan said, describing the French leader as "charming".

With a wall of students' cellphone cameras fixed on the French head of state, the buzz around Macron's visit quickly spread via social media.

He had already caused a stir after he was filmed on a surprise jog in a local park on Friday morning.

"We saw the videos online. He looks like he is still very lean and very healthy," said 20-year-old student Su Chang, standing behind temporary barriers erected to contain the waiting crowd.

When Macron arrived at around 3:00 pm (0700 GMT), students jostled for a chance to shake his hand in rapturous scenes that echoed his 2023 visit to a university campus in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.

Macron arrived in Chengdu on Thursday evening after talks with President Xi Jinping in Beijing that canvassed relations between the two governments and as the French leader sought to shore up Chinese support for a path to a ceasefire in Ukraine.

- Panda diplomacy -

Closer to home, Sichuan University students said they hoped Macron's visit would bring stronger academic ties.

"I think we should carry out some cooperative projects between our universities and France," Ye, the material sciences student, said as he waited to enter the venue via a security check.

"China and France have advantages in different fields, so we can learn from each other."

While the president spent the afternoon on campus, his wife Brigitte Macron paid a visit to Chengdu's giant panda research base.

The two nations signed an agreement to bring two pandas from China to France by 2027, replacing two that were recently returned to Chengdu from a French zoo.

"Sending the pandas to France is a display of the very friendly interactions between the Chinese and French people," clinical medicine student Gu Xingyu said, ahead of Macron's arrival.

"We really hope... it can promote the friendship between our two countries."

Pandas and ping-pong: Macron ending China visit on lighter note
Chengdu, China (AFP) Dec 5, 2025 - An ancient dam, pandas and ping-pong: French leader Emmanuel Macron concluded his fourth state visit to China on Friday, striking a more relaxed note in the city of Chengdu after tough discussions on Ukraine and trade with his counterpart Xi Jinping a day earlier.

Far from the imposing Great Hall of the People in Beijing where the two leaders held talks, Xi and First Lady Peng Liyuan showed Macron and his wife Brigitte around the centuries-old Dujiangyan Dam, a World Heritage Site set against the mountainous landscape of Sichuan province in the centre of China.

Macron, who was earlier filmed going for a morning jog near a lake alongside his security detail, was told through an interpreter about the ancient irrigation system, which dates back to the third century BC and continues to provide water to the Sichuan Basin plain.

The French president said he was "very touched" by the gesture, a departure from official protocol. He had previously hosted Xi in the Pyrenees -- where he had spent time as a child -- in May 2024.

Macron said the trip was a sign of mutual trust and a desire to "act together" at a time when international tensions are rising and trade imbalances are widening to China's advantage.

The two presidential couples will part ways after a lunch, with the Macrons continuing the trip independently.

- Panda diplomacy -

Macron was given a rock star welcome by students in Chengdu, China's fourth-largest city with 21 million inhabitants that is considered one of the most culturally and socially open in China.

Hundreds of people, including students and residents, lined the outside of a Sichuan University sports stadium -- some for hours -- to greet him, cheering as he arrived.

"I'm very happy and honoured that he has come to Chengdu and our Sichuan University," material sciences student Ye Maoxuan said, describing the French president as "charming".

Brigitte Macron, meanwhile, will visit the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, where two 17-year-old pandas, loaned to France in 2012 as part of China's "panda diplomacy", have just returned.

There, she will meet Yuan Meng, the first giant panda born in France in 2017, to whom she is "Godmother", and who arrived in China in 2023.

China has promised to send two new giant pandas to France, to replace those that were returned to Chengdu, with the director of Beauval Zoo saying on Friday they would be sent by 2027.

"We will definitely receive new pandas. I hope this transfer of pandas will happen fairly quickly. In any case, it will be by early 2027 at the latest," Rodolphe Delord said.

The forests of Sichuan are home to numerous protected species, from snow leopards to giant pandas.

Through loans to zoos, China has made these bears emblematic ambassadors of its friendship with peoples from Japan to Germany.

Cubs born abroad are sent a few years later to Chengdu to participate in breeding and rehabilitation programmes in the wild.

For his part, the French president will meet table tennis brothers Alexis and Felix Lebrun, stars of the 2024 Paris Olympics, who are in China for the Mixed Team Table Tennis World Cup.

- Tentative Signals -

The French president used the trip to urge Xi to work towards ending the war in Ukraine and to correct the trade imbalances with France and Europe.

"We must maintain the war effort... and increase pressure on the Russian economy in particular," Macron told students at Sichuan University on Friday.

"Unity between the Americans and the Europeans on the Ukrainian issue is essential," he said. "We must not give in to any spirit of division. We need the US to have peace. The US needs us for this peace to be robust and lasting."

China regularly calls for peace talks and respect for the territorial integrity of all countries, but has never condemned Russia for its 2022 invasion.

Western governments accuse Beijing of providing Russia with crucial economic support for its war effort, notably by supplying it with military components for its defence industry, something Beijing denies.

Emmanuel Macron's call for increased Chinese investment in France appears to have been heeded.

A letter of intent to this effect was signed on Thursday, with Xi Jinping stating his readiness to "increase reciprocal investments" for a "fair trading environment".