Sometimes it’s the little scenes that can be as revealing as they are revealing. When the Chancellor was asked at the most recent EU summit why he was traveling to China with a large business delegation and whether that wasn’t sending the wrong signal, Chancellor Olaf Scholz answered, as so often, somewhat bad-tempered, taciturn, but with a mischievous smile: Why should be wrong, Germany has always done it that way. If he didn’t take a delegation with him, then the question of why would be justified, said Scholz.
Business as usual, in a time that basically has almost nothing in common with the past 30 years. Be that as it may, Scholz is now flying to Beijing, as the very first Western leader since the pandemic began and shortly after Xi Jinping allowed himself to be enthroned as a kind of powerful emperor of China. The Xi system stands for a new totalitarian China.
And the Chancellor is not only bringing a business delegation, but also a gift that could hardly be more symbolic: Against six of his specialist ministers, against his European partners, the Chancellor decided to approve the entry of the Chinese state-owned company Cosco into the Port of Hamburg. And that’s not all: The chip production of the Dortmund semiconductor manufacturer Elmos could soon have a Chinese owner. At least that’s what the chancellor wants.
It was obviously important to him to keep business as usual with Beijing. Critics, on the other hand, speak – not wrongly – of gestures of submission. And the question is certainly not unjustified as to whether it shouldn’t also be up to Berlin to set a sign of discontinuity, especially after the devastating strategic miscalculations of the past decades in German Russia policy.
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Wouldn’t it be in Germany’s deepest interest for Europe to send a signal of unity? Was it because the chancellor had responded to the French President’s idea of going to Beijing together?
Olaf Scholz went to China with a business delegation – Biontech was one of them. (photo from May 2022)
(Photo: IMAGO/Xinhua)
No more special way towards China – that should be the maxim of the announced new China strategy, on which the federal government is working. “Russia is the storm, China is climate change” – this is how the President of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Thomas Haldenwang, aptly put it.
Xi does not like to join military suicide missions as easily as Putin, but he is more strategically adept in foreign policy and thinks more long-term. But China is many times more powerful than Russia – and no less imperialist.
A Taiwan invasion would be catastrophic for the world economy
Xi has brought Hong Kong into line, Xi sanctions unwelcome trading partners like Lithuania or Australia as he pleases, he makes emerging countries docile via credit dependencies as part of the Silk Road. And above all: Xi has recently announced that he wants to bring Taiwan home to the Reich – if necessary by force. Nobody should assume that Beijing would be as amateurish as Moscow.
>>Read also: President Xi’s claims to omnipotence are a disaster for Europe’s companies
Also, nobody knows when China will feel strong and secure enough to take this step. Very few, however, doubt that such a scenario will become reality, which would also have catastrophic consequences for the global economy and in particular for that national economy that has tied its economic fate to the People’s Republic like no other country: Germany.
What do the framework conditions mean for the chancellor’s trip and the German China strategy? No, the federal government should not seek a break with the People’s Republic, following the US example. It would be negligent not to prepare for the scenario of a Taiwan invasion. Just as it would be negligent not to reduce dependencies and diversify supply chains.
German managers talk as if old China still existed
Because these dependencies are more complex than in the case of Russia. It is about strategic raw materials such as rare earths or silicon. It’s about future technologies such as AI or 5G radio technology. And above all, it’s about the gigantic Chinese market, which seems indispensable to many German managers.
Cosco also has shares in other European ports such as Rotterdam or Piraeus.
(Photo: dpa)
Of course they want to continue doing business there. However, it is doubtful whether it is strategically wise from a business point of view to act as if the new China is the old one. A country willing to sacrifice its indeed breathtaking economic successes to Marxist-Leninist ideology is no longer the China of Deng Xiaoping. Nevertheless, BASF is investing ten billion there, Siemens wants to double its sales in the core business “digital industries” to around four billion euros by 2025. VW and Mercedes are more dependent on the Chinese market than ever before. Even Aldi is increasing its commitment.
And some managers still sound as if China is still the El Dorado of the two decades after the fall of the Wall, as if the formula “change through trade” has not long been discredited as shallow economism.
>>Read also: China’s debtors are trapped: They needed the money, now Beijing is deciding on their future
Nobody in Europe is calling for a full detachment from China. Even blindly following the American path of radical containment cannot be a strategy. But the times when one could define the relationship to the People’s Republic primarily from an economic perspective are over.
If only because whoever becomes US President in 2024, the Americans will increase the pressure on Beijing. German corporations could then possibly be faced with the choice of choosing between the American and Chinese markets. The scenario of a bipolar world economy is real.
If Germany wants to be at least a co-determining factor in this world, it needs Europe – and also access to the large European internal market as a bargaining chip in negotiations with China.
With his recent special moves, Chancellor Scholz did not necessarily give the impression that he took this aspect too seriously. Maybe that will change during his talks with Xi – the great chairman who poses the system question and who considers his authoritarian model not only suitable for the world, but a world leader.
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