Ending 3-Day Visit to China, Macron: Still Wanting More

On the evening of December 5th, French President Emmanuel Macron departed from Chengdu, concluding his three-day state visit to China.

On the afternoon of the 5th, Macron visited Sichuan University and interacted with students. When answering a student's question, he said that the only regret of this trip is that time always passes too quickly. “Every time I come to China, I try to visit different places. I always hope to have a richer and more comprehensive understanding of your country. But I must humbly say that a truly complete journey is often one where you leave with a sense of 'wanting more and having seen so little,' eagerly looking forward to returning again—I am feeling exactly this way right now.”

Afterwards, Macron went to Sichuan Provincial Gymnasium to visit French table tennis athletes participating in the Mixed Team World Cup, and exchanged table tennis skills with both French and Chinese players.

Welcomed Like a 'Rock Star'

The atmosphere on Sichuan University's campus was especially lively that day. Reuters described that Macron was greeted with a “rock star”-like welcome at Sichuan University, with students surrounding him.

France's Le Figaro mentioned that an AFP reporter present exclaimed, “You really are a veritable rock star!” upon witnessing the scene. Macron jokingly asked, laughing, “Were you scared by all this?”

Meanwhile, French First Lady Brigitte Macron visited the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding. Last week (November 26), giant pandas Huān Huān and Yuán Zǎi just finished 13 years living in France and returned to Chengdu to enjoy their later years.

During this trip, Brigitte Macron also saw Yuán Mèng, the first giant panda born in France. This giant panda returned to China in 2023, and Brigitte Macron is its “godmother.”

This trip to Chengdu also marked a new chapter in China-France giant panda cooperation. On the same day in Chengdu, Rodolphe Delord, director of France's ZooParc de Beauval, stated that a new pair of Chinese giant pandas is planned to arrive at the zoo in 2027, with a cooperation term of 10 years.

Sichuan and France have reaped fruitful results in multiple fields such as trade, culture, education, and sports. Since 1981, when Chengdu and Montpellier established the first international sister city relationship for Sichuan Province, Sichuan has established two provincial-level friendly relations and 28 city-level international sister cities or friendly cooperative relations with France. In the first 11 months of this year, there were 28,500 French visitors to Sichuan, a year-on-year increase of 57.33%; from January to October this year, Sichuan's total imports and exports with France reached RMB 6.72 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 2.3%.