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Five days after formalizing his fourth candidacy for the Élysée, Jean-Luc Mélenchon clarified, on May 8, 2026 on LCI, what his foreign policy would be in the face of the great authoritarian powers. On Taiwan, the Uighurs and Iran, its positions expose France to strategic risks that its own left-wing allies now refuse to endorse.
On May 8, 2026, from Marseille, Jean-Luc Mélenchon answered questions from LCI for an hour and a half. China invades Taiwan – what is France doing? “If China takes Taiwan and I am President of the Republic, we will not get involved. HAS” He adds: “Taiwan is China. » He admits in the same sentence that China is “a dictatorship”. This does not change his answer.
The declaration has a genealogy. A few days before his official announcement of his candidacy, on May 3 on TF1, Mélenchon published on Meta that he heard “honor the word and signature of France and General De Gaulle” on the principle of one China, a reference to the diplomatic recognition of the People’s Republic by Paris in 1964. France does not recognize Taipei: this is a real diplomatic fact, shared by many states. But preemptively announcing that no military annexation of the island would justify a French reaction goes clearly beyond legal continuity.
Dominique Moïsi, geopolitical advisor at the Montaigne Institute, posed the direct consequence: declare in advance France’s passivity “is like giving Beijing a blank check”. THE 24 millions of Taiwanese live under a democratic regime threatened by a nuclear power. It is not a geopolitical abstraction.
The left is fracturing
Marine Tondelier, president of the Ecologists, responded on social networks: “If China annexes Taiwan, “we must intervene in a polite and respectful manner so that it happens peacefully.” Xi Jinping must be trembling! HAS” A few weeks earlier, she had published a note entitled “Getting out of the fascination with China”where she denounced the vision of Beijing as « Stability plate » in the thought of Mélenchon.
LFI responded without delay. Bastien Lachaud accused Tondelier of posturing “go to war”. . . . Danià ̈le Obono is aware of it “discomfort” provoked by his attacks.
Raphaël Glucksmann formulated the same criticism in sharper terms, in February 2024, about Ukraine. LFI’s reluctance to arm Kyiv inspired this formulation: France rebellious at work «à la deéfaite des démocraties ». Rachid Temal, PS senator and vice-president of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate, speaks about « Radio-Moscow ». These two formulas were aimed at Ukraine. They now apply to a second theater.
169 votes for, four abstentions LFI
In January 2022, the National Assembly voted on a resolution recognizing the violence against the Uighurs in China as “constituting crimes against humanity and genocide”. The text collected 169 votes for, one against, and five abstentions. THE four LFI elected officials present in the Hemicycle, including Clémentine Autain, abstained.
Before this vote, Mélenchon had publicly stated his position: “I don’t believe in the genocide theory. Those who use it, in my opinion, are doing us a disservice, because they are trivializing a word whose full significance they do not seem to understand. HAS” He described the situation as “a crackdown by the Chinese government against Uighur Islamist organizations”. On Thinkerview, he described those who spoke of genocide as “poodles” Americans.
Amnesty International established in 2021 that Beijing’s treatment of Turkic-speaking Muslims in Xinjiang amounted to crimes against humanity. Human Rights Watch estimated that approximately 500 000 the number of Uighurs still detained after the repressive wave that began in 2017. In August 2022, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights concluded that these violations “could constitute crimes under international law, in particular crimes against humanity”. The refusal of the term « genocide » by Mélenchon is not a prudent legal nuance: it is a reading of the facts in direct contradiction with the conclusions of three independent institutions.
Anasse Kazib, Trotskyist activist from Permanent Revolution, published a text entitled “Mélenchon and the genocide of the Uighurs: a scandalous positionâ€. He writes that the rebellious leader “takes up Chinese propaganda which reduces what is happening in Xinjiang to repression against Islamist organizations” et “de facto dissociates itself from the Uighur people”. The criticism does not come from the right.
An embarrassing parliamentary report
In June 2025, the European Affairs Committee of the National Assembly published a report of 153 pages signed by LFI MP Sophia Chikirou on relations between the European Union and China. The document asserted that France “sometimes has more common interests with China than with its European partners”castigated “the alignment of the European Union with the American strategy of confrontation” and believed that accusations of Chinese expansionism “lacked evidence”.
The Human Rights League denounced a text which “overlooks the massive and systematic human rights violations committed by the Chinese government, notably in Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong”. Defense experts have criticized his « naïveté » faced with threats of Chinese economic espionage and academic interference. Le Monde judged him “Embarrassing” for France’s European partners. This report is not a platform declaration: it is an official document produced by the candidate’s parliamentary group.
Khamenei “executioner” – and then?
On March 1, 2026, the day after the American-Israeli bombings which killed supreme guide Ali Khamenei, Mélenchon published a two-part declaration. First time: Khamenei was “the executioner of the Iranian people” dont “the record was written with the blood of its countless victims”. Second stage: the attack constitutes “the negation of all international law”imputable à “The will of Trump and Netanyahu has prevailed”.
On May 8 on LCI, he went further: if he had been president during the attack on February 28, he would have constituted “a front of refusal” bringing together Pedro Sanchez’s Spain, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico against intervention. The legal argument has a real basis: aggression without a Security Council mandate violates the United Nations Charter. But the magazine Regards noted that Mélenchon placed “on an equal footing the aggressor and the attacked” and referred to Macron and the United Nations the management of a crisis for which he organized no significant mobilization. Call a manager « bourreau » then build an international coalition to defend his regime from the consequences of his actions: the tension between the two positions has not been explained.
« Neither Washington nor Beijing » : the dead angles of a doctrine
Mélenchon summarizes his vision in one formula: “Neither Moscow, nor Washington, nor Beijing, but Paris.. He presents it as a Gaullist continuity: exit from NATO, refusal of a defense Europe aligned with Washington, multilateralism based on international law. His grievances against Macron have one substance: sending the aircraft carrier Charles-de-Gaulle into the Strait of Hormuz, following “the law of the strongest”abandon the tradition of French diplomatic independence. These arguments exist in serious strategic debate.
Thomas Gomart, director of IFRI, identified before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee a “Transatlantic schism” which requires France to adapt, not withdraw. Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research, estimated that the illusion of “interdependence which would necessarily bring peace” East « now invalidated by the facts ». Treating Russia, China and Iran as reliable partners in a stable multipolar order comes, according to him, from a « deep ignorance ».
The Telos review, founded by academic political scientists, was more direct on Ukraine: the position of Mélenchon, who supported the thesis according to which Zelensky “No longer president”son mandate expired, est “a pure copy of that of Vladimir Putin”. Mikael Hertoff, a Nordic political scientist quoted in the Bastille Network, observes that “the vast majority of the left” in Scandinavian countries supports Ukraine. LFI constitutes, on this point, an exception in the landscape of the European left.
Marianne summarized the underlying mechanics: “fierce hostility to American imperialism, even if it means minimizing those of China and Russia”. International law, invoked to condemn Washington and Tel Aviv, is applied with notable discretion when the facts concern Xinjiang or Taipei. This double standard is not an accidental contradiction: it is the result of a hierarchy of priorities in which anti-Americanism takes precedence over ethical coherence. For a candidate who will seek the position of head of the armed forces and first diplomat of France, this hierarchy has a cost that his allies are beginning to name.
