Beijing It is an unusual reception that Chancellor Olaf Scholz received when he arrived in Beijing at 9:30 a.m. local time. Even before the plane comes to a standstill, dozens of “da bais”, “Big Whites”, as the people in the white full protective suits are colloquially called in China, are already on the runway. In several buses, all delegation participants are tested for Covid right away – including the business representatives.
While Biontech founder Uğur Şahin is queuing in front of one of the buses alongside the other German group leaders to be tested, Chancellor Scholz is being subjected to the procedure by a German doctor on the plane.
Scholz is the first high-ranking representative of a G7 country to visit China in almost three years. After a reception at the airport with a red carpet and a military guard of honor, he first meets Xi Jinping, with whom lunch is also planned. Scholz repeatedly emphasizes how happy he is to meet China’s head of state and party. “It is good that we will have a very intensive exchange here on all issues,” Scholz said shortly before the meeting in Beijing – and mentions the further development of economic relations, but also “issues where we are pursuing different perspectives”.
The business delegation traveling with them first went to the state guest house in the Chinese capital. The complex is embedded in a small park, inside the building huge chandeliers impress the guests, in the garden birds are chirping. While Scholz is talking to Xi, the twelve-strong business delegation, including BASF boss Martin Brudermüller, Adidas boss Kaspar Rorsted and BMW boss Oliver Zipse, receives a briefing from Jens Hildebrandt, executive board member of the German Chamber of Commerce in China (AHK).
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Business welcomes the Chancellor’s visit to the People’s Republic. During his visit, Scholz had to “balance” how the relationship with China could work in the future, said Hildebrandt. It is good to have this first conversation and to continue the dialogue between the two countries at the highest level. He hopes that the Chancellor will work towards “opening China and urgently needed reforms in the area of market access and liberalization”.
Corona regulations overshadow visit
It should be an inaugural visit, but the controversial trip is anything but a casual meeting between Scholz and Xi Jinping. Not only because of the difficult issues that Scholz has in his luggage and the criticism he faces because of the trip. It is also the Chinese government’s draconian measures to combat Covid that make the visit so unusual.
The total flight time of more than 20 hours is around twice as long as the actual stay in Beijing. Scholz flies back to Berlin in the evening. Because of the quarantine regulations, which are still in force three years after the start of the pandemic, he just wants to get in and out of the People’s Republic quickly.
Beijing is showing its best side this Friday morning: bright blue skies, excellent air quality. German and Chinese flags line the way of the motorcade from the airport into the city, dozens of police officers block the way for state guests. Beijing still knows how to impress high-ranking guests and welcome them with the highest honors.
The red carpet is rolled out for the Federal Chancellor under strict protective measures.
(Photo: dpa)
And yet, on this Friday morning, the chancellor is entering a different country than found his predecessor in office. China has changed massively in the past three years. This is mainly due to the draconian measures to combat the corona virus. Millions of people have been and continue to be locked in their homes for weeks and months, millions of them without enough food. In the meantime, not a day goes by without new horror reports from the People’s Republic about inhumane conditions in quarantine facilities.
Olaf Scholz will not notice any of this. He remains in a bubble created by the Chinese authorities for the entire 11 hours of his stay. On the plane, the crew discussed what happens if Scholz tests positive for Corona on arrival. “The worst case scenario” as one says. Then it would go straight back to Berlin, so the announcement.
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But Scholz does not test positive, the meetings with China’s head of state and party leader Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Li Keqiang can take place. “Today’s China is no longer the same as it was five or ten years ago,” Scholz said in a guest article for the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” shortly before his trip. This analysis is also shared by the Federal Foreign Office.
“If China changes, how we deal with China must also change”
The Chinese government is becoming increasingly aggressive on the international stage, and Beijing is still not condemning the Russian war of aggression against the Ukrainians, which has hit Europe to the core. And only a few days before Scholz’s arrival in China, head of state and party leader Xi Jinping renewed the threat to Taiwan that he would also reserve the right to take violent measures against the island state.
The Chancellor’s visit is brief and controversial.
(Photo: via REUTERS)
“It is clear that if China changes, the way we deal with China must also change,” said Scholz. But as to what follows from this consensus analysis, there are differing views within the government. The Chancellor insists on “a sense of proportion and pragmatism”. According to Scholz, a “large part of the trade between Germany and China” relates to products for which there is neither a lack of alternative sources of supply nor the threat of dangerous monopolies. “Rather, China, Germany and Europe benefit equally.”
There had been a lot of criticism of the trip. It ignited on the one hand at the time of the visit, shortly after Xi Jinping further expanded his power at the party congress – and on the other hand at the business delegation that Scholz took with him. This time it is significantly smaller than usual, it is said to justify it in government circles.
In China’s media, the chancellor’s visit with a “luxury” business delegation from large corporations was interpreted as a signal for “business as usual” in German China policy. Wu Huiping, deputy head of the Center for German Studies at the renowned Tongji University in China, said he was continuing the “steady and pragmatic China policy of previous German chancellors like Merkel, which placed economic and trade cooperation at the heart of German-Chinese relations”. quoted by the business newspaper Yicai.
In the run-up to Scholz’s visit, even the party media, which is otherwise very aggressive towards the West, was mostly benevolent. For example, an article in the English-language propaganda newspaper Global Times disappeared, which called on Scholz to focus on “pragmatic cooperation” and not on geopolitics so that the trip to China would be a success.
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