Chinese President Xi Jinping will meet with French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during her trip to Europe next week, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced today.

China would like the meeting to be an opportunity to enhance China-EU strategic, constructive and mutually beneficial relations, a ministry spokesman said during a regular press briefing.

Moreover the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party is to meet in July in plenary sessionwhich will be the third since this elite decision-making body was elected in 2022. It will focus on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complicated situations abroad.

Central Committee plenary sessions are important events in the Chinese political calendar. They require the presence of the entire Central Committee, consisting of 205 regular and 171 alternate members, with President Xi at the helm.

The Central Committee typically meets seven times in plenary between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The members of the current Central Committee were elected at the last party congress in October 2022.

Further deepening reforms and promoting China’s modernization will be on the agenda of the third plenary session, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing a regular meeting of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee.

Since the 1990s, third plenary sessions have typically been held in the fall. The party was expected to hold a plenary in either October or November 2023, which did not happen.