Whether he’s trying to influence for Airbus to be trading at aircraft to Bangladesh or hunting for rare earths in Mongolia, French President Emmanuel Macron is on the offensive in Asia, pitching France as a useful option to better powers. After two days of high-level conversations with G20 rulers in New Delhi, where he was invited to lunch with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Macron was all set to leave for adjacent nation Bangladesh, a rapidly developing South Asian country which consists of 170 million people.
The two-day stopover in Dhaka was slice of a French plan to aim mid-sized nations in a place where superpowers such as China, Russia or the U.S. are bustling for impact. “In a place dealing with fresh imperialism, we are willing to propose a third way,” Macron told Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina after landing in a sweltering Dhaka late on Sunday. “All our plan is aimed at polishing the independence and the strategic autonomy of our friends to provide them the ‘freedom of sovereignty’,” Macron said.
The French governer, who Hasina called “a breath of fresh air in international politics”, was keeping an eye on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who went to Bangladesh just some days before the G20 summit. Russia is creating a nuclear power plant in Bangladesh, a $13 billion activity financed by a Russian government loan. The French are also making attempts to provide their nuclear expertise for purchase, even if a power plant contract is a more distant prospect.