French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné will visit China on Monday. The visit comes on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of Franco-Chinese diplomatic relations.
This is the second time in less than six months that a French foreign minister has visited China. France, under the leadership of General de Gaulle, was in 1964 the first major Western country to establish diplomatic relations at the ambassadorial level with the People's Republic from China. The decision, audacious at the time, is regularly cited as an example of independent diplomacy.