Germany publishes China strategy to address ‘systemic rivalry’

Annalena Baerbock. the foreign minister, who is a member of the Greens, has pursued a much harder line on China than the more conciliatory Scholz, with regular criticism of the country’s human rights record. She said the strategy was a signal “that we are not naive”.

She said: “For Germany, China remains a partner, competitor and systemic rival but the aspect of systemic rivalry has in recent years increasingly come to the fore. Anyone who listens to China knows with what self-confidence it will decisively influence the development of our world — more repressive at home and more offensive abroad. China has changed — and so our China policy must change too.”

Scholz, by contrast, backed the recent purchase of a stake in the port of Hamburg by Cosco, the Chinese shipping company. He was also the first western leader to visit China after the coronavirus pandemic, when he travelled to Beijing with a business delegation in November last year.

The outcome of the coalition’s differences over China has been a vague, balanced document in line with what was previously agreed by the European Union. It pledges “de-risking”, a term coined by Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, while avoiding a “decoupling” from China.

It is telling that German business federations have praised the strategy, which stopped short of imposing feared checks on planned German investments in China.

Siegfried Russwurm, the president of the Federation of German Industries, said: “It addresses geopolitical risks but at the same time emphasises Germany’s interest in substantial economic relations and co-operation with China to meet global challenges.”

In its strategy, the German government said it was committed to ensuring that economic co-operation with China “becomes fairer, more sustainable and more reciprocal”.

It noted: “Whereas China’s dependencies on Europe are constantly declining, Germany’s dependencies on China have taken on greater significance in recent years. It is not our intention to impede China’s economic progress and development.”

The German government said it wanted to stop technologies that were developed in Germany from being used to boost military capabilities that threatened international peace and security.

Germany said it would not be deterred from doing business with self-governed Taiwan, which Beijing considers a breakaway province. The strategy states: “Germany has close and good relations with Taiwan in many areas and wants to expand them. The status quo of the Taiwan Strait may only be changed by peaceful means and mutual consent. Military escalation would also affect German and European interests.”

The strategy has been released a few weeks after Scholz and members of his cabinet hosted a delegation led by Li Qiang, the new Chinese premier, whose visit to Berlin was his first foreign trip since becoming China’s number-two official in March.

At the meeting Scholz pressed China to lean harder on Russia over the war in Ukraine, while the countries pledged to work together to combat climate change as two of the world’s biggest carbon dioxide emitters.

The China strategy has been built on Germany’s national security strategy, which was issued a month ago and was also a product of coalition compromises while being short on concrete steps. It followed pressure on Germany to flex its muscles as the EU’s most populous country and strongest economy after it spent decades neglecting its military and banking on friendly relations with Russia after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Marcel Fratzscher, the president of DIW Berlin, the economic institute, said the China strategy left many questions unanswered, including how Germany planned to achieve its goals. He told Reuters: “The worrying truth is that Germany is so dependent on China that a rapid reduction of dependencies and risks seems unrealistic.”