- Scholz is the first G7 leader to visit China since the pandemic began
- Germany is drafting a new, tougher China strategy
- Falcons fear that Scholz will continue to prioritize economic relations
- Business delegation accompanies Chancellor to Beijing on November 4th
BERLIN, Nov 2 (Portal) – German Chancellor Olaf Scholz makes an inaugural visit to China on Friday, which will be closely watched for clues as to how serious Germany is about reducing its economic dependence on Asia’s rising superpower and its communist to confront leadership.
His one-day visit on Nov. 4 will make Scholz the first G7 leader to visit China since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and the first to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping since he assumed power at a Communist Party convention solidified .
Close trade ties link Asia and Europe’s largest economies, with China’s rapid expansion and demand for Germany’s cars and machines fueling its own growth over the past two decades. China has been Germany’s largest trading partner since 2016.
A current survey by the Ifo think tank showed that almost half of German industrial companies are now dependent on significant advance payments from China.
But Scholz’s trip comes at a time of growing concern in the West — particularly in Germany’s key security ally, the United States — over China’s trade practices, human rights record and territorial ambitions.
It also comes amid concerns at home over Germany’s dependence on another increasingly assertive, authoritarian state amid the lingering consequences of its over-reliance on Russian energy.
“It is extremely important that we never again make ourselves so dependent on a country that does not share our values,” Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock told ARD when asked about China.
Scholz, who will meet both Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Xi, will urge China to open up its markets, raise human rights concerns and discuss “autocratic” tendencies, a German government spokesman said last week.
He also hopes China can help persuade Russia to end the war in Ukraine, a government official said on Wednesday.
“This trip is an exploratory journey to find out where China stands, where China is going and what forms of cooperation are possible through face-to-face exchanges,” the official said.
Germany, under former Chancellor Angela Merkel, had already begun to take a somewhat more restrictive stance on China, for example by sending a warship into the disputed South China Sea last year for the first time in two decades.
Now the Scholz government is drafting its first China strategy based on a coalition agreement that takes a tougher stance on Beijing and mentions thorny issues like Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as human rights abuses in Xianjiang.
Unlike his predecessor, the Chancellor made his inaugural visit to Asia, not to China, as a sign of the changing times.
trading approach?
But some coalition members, European officials and rights activists fear there are early signs Scholz, who has warned against decoupling, will not mark a decisive break with what they see as Merkel’s mercantilist approach to China.
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Scholz is accompanied by a delegation of business leaders, including the CEOs of Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE), BASF (BASFn.DE), Siemens (SIEGn.DE), Deutsche Bank (DBKGn.DE), BMW (BMWG.DE), Merck (MRCG.DE) and BioNTech , according to sources familiar with the matter.
No corporate deals are planned, a German government official said.
“His decision to bring a business delegation, however, shows that for Germany profit continues to trump human rights,” said Dolkun Isa, president of the Munich-based group World Uyghhur Congress, on Wednesday, arguing Scholz is overlooking a genocide taking place in the Xinjiang region .
Beijing denies any abuse there.
Last week, the German Chancellor also pushed through a cabinet decision to allow China’s Cosco to invest in a terminal in the port of Hamburg, despite opposition from its coalition partners.
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Scholz’s junior coalition partners, the Greens and (FDP) Free Democrats, have long been more aggressive towards China than his Social Democrats (SPD), and the Cosco decision sparked an outcry.
FDP General Secretary Bijan Djir-Sarai called the decision “naive” and criticized the timing of Scholz’s trip to China as “deeply unfortunate”.
Additionally, French and German government sources told Portal that French President Emmanuel Macron Scholz has proposed going to Beijing together to send a signal of EU unity to Beijing and counter what they see as Chinese attempts to become one country play over another.
But the German chancellor turned down Macron’s offer, the sources said.
EU countries should adopt a more unified approach, the European Union’s industry chief told Portal on Monday.
Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke; Additional reporting by Paul Carrel; Editing by Alexandra Hudson
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