As Speaker McCarthy meets today with the president of the Republic of China, Tsai Ing-wen, President Macron of France is in Beijing attempting to woo the Chinese Communist Party boss. The schedules, while coincidental, are telling. What they tell is the tale of America and Europe as strange bedfellows — and on Communist China, perhaps, bedfellows no more.

For it seems that France, like much of Western Europe, has chosen to align with President Xi’s vision of a new world order over the current American-led one. If Monsieur Macron is not careful, that could be the outcome of his trip. And among his fellow Europeans, there seems to be plenty of support for the idea.

“I believe it is neither viable — nor in Europe’s interest — to decouple from China,” the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said in a speech at Germany’s Mercator Institute for China Studies. “This is why we need to focus on de-risk — not de-couple.” Mrs. von der Leyen has traveled with Mr. Macron to Beijing in an ostensible show of European unity.

Traveling with him, too, is a gaggle of French business leaders, including officials from Airbus and Alstom, which makes trains, as well as artists and filmmakers. They have come as if tributes in exchange for Mr. Xi’s assistance in resolving the war in Ukraine. Also on offer, it seems, is a European promise to resist calls from Washington for Europe to distance itself from Beijing.

“China can play a major role” in finding a “pathway to peace,” Mr. Macron said upon his arrival at Beijing today.

Mr. Xi could well take the bait (prendre l’appât, as we Yanks say), or at least feign doing so. For in soliciting Communist China’s help in negotiating with President Putin and mediating an ostensible peace, Mr. Macron has in effect offered to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s aim of the great Chinese rejuvenation.

In this new era, China will have “moved toward center stage,” Mr. Xi said at the 19th National Party Congress. The center, no doubt, refers to the center of the international order. Should China be permitted to insert itself into Europe’s political affairs, it will have taken a decisive step in that direction.