SHANGHAI — When the Pompidou Center first floated the idea of opening a Chinese outpost more than a decade ago, skeptics back home in France were still fiercely debating the question of whether the country’s cherished national museums should have a role in promoting political and commercial interests abroad.

But with the opening in recent years of the Louvre Abu Dhabi and the Pompidou Málaga, the country’s strategy of using “museum diplomacy” to raise its profile overseas is well underway. That effort took a bold step forward on Tuesday when the Pompidou, the renowned Parisian museum of modern and contemporary art, unveiled an outpost in China. President Emmanuel Macron of France was in attendance at the ceremony.

Situated along the banks of the Huangpu River on Shanghai’s version of Museum Mile, the new outpost is a collaboration with the West Bund Group, a Chinese state-owned development corporation that together with the local government has reportedly invested more than $3 billion in recent years to transform a former industrial neighborhood into a 7-mile waterfront cultural corridor.