German chancellor in high-stakes China visit

The German chancellor is in the spotlight as he prepares to make a high-stakes visit to China – the first time a G7 leader has visited the country since the start of the Covid pandemic.

China was Germany’s top trading partner over the last six years, “with bilateral trade reaching $245bn last year”, said Axios. Around half of German industrial firms are heavily reliant on China but there is mounting concern in the West about Beijing’s trade practices, human rights record and territorial ambitions.

Therefore Olaf Scholz’s visit, which starts tomorrow, will be “closely watched for clues on how serious Germany is about reducing its economic reliance on Asia’s rising superpower” and “confronting its Communist leadership”, said Reuters.

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The trip “could send a confusing signal about how Europe’s largest economy plans to deal with Beijing”, said Axios, especially as other EU countries “increasingly toughen their stances on China”.

Andrew Small, from the German Marshall Fund, told Axios that Scholz is “specifically trying to maintain a certain traditional framework and economic ties” with Beijing, “in the teeth of pretty sweeping opposition from… the public, most of his coalition and increasingly other parts of Europe as well”.

Meanwhile, Scholz is trying to present a determined and robust front. “We don’t want to decouple from China”, he wrote for Politico, but Berlin “can’t be overreliant”. He insisted that “we will seek cooperation where it lies in our mutual interest, but we will not ignore controversies either”.

Last December, Scholz said that “we need to base our China policy on the China we find in reality”, and vowed to pursue “German and European interests” with “great self-confidence”.

But Thorsten Benner, co-founder and director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, argued on Foreign Policy that he “shows very little of this realism and self-confidence” as he prepares for the visit.