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Pandas and ping-pong: Macron to end China visit on lighter note Estelle.Bronkhorst Fri, 12/05/2025 - 06:00 BEIJING - An ancient dam, pandas and ping-pong: French leader Emmanuel Macron concludes his fourth state visit to China on Friday, striking a more relaxed note after some tough discussions with his counterpart Xi Jinping the previous day on Ukraine and trade. The French president and his wife Brigitte will head to the city of Chengdu in the southwestern Sichuan province, to meet the Chinese presidential couple in a setting worlds apart from the monumental and solemn Great Hall of the People in Beijing.Macron said he was very touched by this gesture, a departure from official protocol, after he hosted Xi in the Pyrenees in May 2024, a place where Macron spent time as a child.After his visit to the Pyrenees, Xi has chosen to take his guest to the slopes of Mount Qingcheng, at around 726 meters elevation, where an imposing dam and third-century BC irrigation system are located.The two presidential couples will conclude their reunion with lunch, before Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron continue with a more personal agenda.In Chengdu, China s fourth-largest city with 21 million inhabitants that is considered one of the most culturally and socially open in China, Macron will meet with students.Brigitte Macron, for her part, 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.The forests of Sichuan are home to numerous protected species, from snow leopards to giant pandas, famous for their languid gait and dark eyes surrounded by black spots.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.

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