China France Photo:VCG

 
Cooperation between China and France, which has proven to lead to win-win results, offers the best example debunking the decoupling and "de-risking" calls in the EU, said Christian de Boissieu, a French economist and professor of economics at the Pantheon-Sorbonne University, while slamming those calls as "crazy and naïve."

"It would be crazy for us as Europeans to decouple from a country like China, which is posting a rather nice rate of growth in its economy and goods trade. Both China and Europe are winning and gaining something out of the cooperation. Trying to decouple from China would be the worst solution for Europe, because China is still a locomotive for world growth, and we benefit from such growth," Boissieu told the Global Times on Tuesday.

The comments were made on the sidelines of the 2024 Tsinghua PBCSF Global Finance Forum in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang Province. The two-day forum closed on Tuesday.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France. According to Boissieu, China and France have established "close, special and complementary links," and France is taking the lead within the EU to stay open to mutually beneficial cooperation with China.

"In French [economic circles], I don't hear a lot of discussion about the decoupling scenario. We're implementing [cooperation] measures that offer a lot of possibilities for both sides. We also stay open to normal competition," Boissieu said, noting that France will continue to buy Chinese-made electric cars and Chinese batteries.

China and France signed 18 cooperation agreements between government agencies, covering areas such as aviation, agriculture, people-to-people exchanges, green development, and small and medium-sized enterprises' cooperation during China's top leader's state visit to France in May. 

During the past six decades, bilateral trade jumped nearly 800 times, reaching $78.9 billion in 2023. China has become France's largest trading partner outside the EU, and France is a major trading partner for China within the EU, the Xinhua News Agency reported. 

Boissieu highlighted the rosy prospects of financial governance cooperation between China and France. 

"There is a point of convergence of interests between the two countries concerning the function of the international monetary system. Both countries believe that we are living in a world with asymmetry between the US and the rest of the world. It would be nice if we could live in a world more balanced in terms of market shares," Boissieu said. 

The US dollar ranks No.1 in terms of the global market share, and the US thus could take a protectionist initiative without any kind of arbitration in the system. We have to rebuild confidence, to rebuild the system in such a way that countries will be obliged to follow the rules of the game, he stressed. 

There could be cooperation between China and France to better balance the international monetary and financial systems, he said, while also suggesting that the two countries could deepen cooperation in the development and application of central bank digital currencies.