This month, the South China Morning Post’s Xiaofei Xu sat down with Deng Li, China’s ambassador to France. The conversation was wide-ranging enough to warrant a two-part story. Here is part one, covering China’s European diplomacy.

China would like to see France lead Europe to become a truly independent power to help build a stable multipolar world, Beijing’s top diplomat to France told the South China Morning Post in an exclusive interview.Striking a positive tone on relations between Beijing and Paris despite mounting challenges, Deng Li, China’s ambassador to France, said Europe should not only be an economic and cultural power but also a political force contributing to global peace and stability.And France, as the European Union nation with the strongest tradition of independence and autonomy, should play a leading role in guiding Europe to that goal, he said.

Deng’s remarks came amid what Beijing described as a “once-in-a-century” shift in the global landscape that created risks and uncertainties, further complicated by the volatility of United States policies after the change of administration in January.

“If you want the world to be stable, then you should follow what our President Xi Jinping calls an ‘equal and orderly multipolar world’ and ‘universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalisation’. I think Europe is now facing a choice in this regard,” Deng said.

“I’ve told the French that, just like this table, it needs at least three legs to be stable,” Deng said. “If Europe has this ambition, it should be able to [become a leg], but whether Europe wants to is a question that only they can answer.”