For Baerbock, the trip to China is probably the most difficult journey of her tenure so far.
(Photo: dpa)
Berlin For Annalena Baerbock, Emmanuel Macron’s disastrous trip to China has one good thing: her first visit to the People’s Republic as Foreign Minister can only go better. The French President’s trip last week was like a never-ending lesson in how not to come across when dealing with the autocratic regime.
The list of mistakes is long: Macron stabbed EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in the back when he distanced himself from her China policy speech – and thus signaled that Europe is divided on the China issue.
He stabbed the German government in the back by propagating “business as usual” with regard to economic relations. While Chancellor Olaf Scholz traveled to Beijing with a business delegation of twelve members in November after three years without a high-ranking German state visit to the People’s Republic, Macron drove there with dozens of CEOs and had lavish business contracts signed. Let the Germans diversify, everything is the same with us – that may not correspond to actual French policy, but it should have been a signal to Beijing.
And as if all that weren’t enough, in an interview with a view to the Taiwan conflict, Macron also expressed himself in a way that can be interpreted as distancing himself from Washington.
In Macron’s failure lies Baerbock’s opportunity. She can now use the trip to show what she has already proven in dealing with Russia: that, unlike Macron or other statesmen before him, she is neither lulled nor intimidated by autocrats. That she is not receptive to the skillful flattery for which China is famous. That she is not afraid to speak plainly – even in the face of autocrats.
That doesn’t mean, of course, that she should burn all bridges. But it is Baerbock’s chance to show that even as a large industrialized nation that is partially dependent on good trade relations with China, you can conduct a dialogue on an equal footing.
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This also includes talking to local European businesses. On the one hand, Baerbock has to hear their understandable concerns first-hand, especially because the traffic light coalition is pursuing a much more China-critical policy than all previous governments. And at the same time it must convey the clear concerns of the federal government.
With China in particular, a successful foreign policy is only possible if you take the economy with you. It doesn’t work without them.
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