Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to France while the two countries commemorate the 50th anniversary of their diplomatic relations is an invitation to put the bilateral relationship into perspective.

From the majestic but distant relations between the Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) and King Louis XIV (1638-1715), to the collaboration between Zuo Zongtang (1812-85) and Prosper Giquel (1835-86), or the action in the field of education by Li Shizeng (1881-1973) and his supporters Edouart Herriot (1872-1957) or Alphonse Aulard (1849-1928), Chinese Francophiles have always responded to the call of French Sinophiles. The world has changed significantly in the past five decades but the mutations have not radically affected the relevance of Gaullism, which is, in its highest expression, the effort to act according to permanent realities. De Gaulle thought and acted under the light of la grandeur, a notion which is at the heart of France's national character. The relative weight of the French power varies, and it has certainly been diminishing by comparison with the Chinese reemergence, but the self-perception of the singular role it has to play is constant.

The imperatives of liberte, egalite et fraternite, have been both a product and a generator of this passion for grandeur, only the exalted aspiration of a nation in movement could proclaim such revolutionary principles but they were at the same time the source of a powerful collective energy.

In the Chinese context, centrality - zhong - mirrors the French grandeur. If a sense of grandeur inspired the French monarchs, emperors and presidents, the "Middle Country" envisioned for itself centrality under Heaven. Versailles and the Forbidden City, the Place of La Concorde and Tiananmen Square are obvious architectural illustrations of the correspondence between the "Grande Nation" and the "Middle Country".

China which has been through the millennia a prodigious process of synthesis, unifying one-fifth of mankind, will go on to apply her harmonizing force at a global level. Animated by a conscious effort of radiation or rayonnement, France aims to federate around what she conceives and enunciates as an enlightening project, by contrast, China's impact is by gravitation, the "Middle Country" coheres around its demographic mass and the continuity of its civilization.