BERLIN: Germany on Thursday (Jul 13) adopted a tougher strategy toward a more “assertive” China, its top trade partner, in a move Beijing warned could “damage cooperation and mutual trust”.
Seeking a balance between competing interests of the EU’s biggest economy, the document overhauls Germany’s stance toward China as a “partner, competitor and systemic rival”.
“We want to reduce critical dependencies in future,” Chancellor Olaf Scholz tweeted, saying Berlin had “reacted to a China that has changed and become more assertive”.
The 64-page blueprint, which the government said was embedded in the European Union’s approach to China, showed Berlin was “realistic but not naive”, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said.
The document covering security policy as well as economic and scientific cooperation is the product of months of wrangling within the German government over its strategy toward China.
While Baerbock of the Greens has pushed for a more hawkish line and a greater emphasis on human rights, Scholz, a Social Democrat, has backed a more trade-friendly stance he calls “de-risking but not decoupling”.
The new China policy marks a finely calibrated balance of the two within the ruling coalition, the product of what Baerbock called “finding compromises … the lifeblood of democracies”.
However it drew a strong reaction from Beijing, which said “viewing China as a ‘systemic competitor and rival’ is not in line with the objective facts, nor with the common interests of the two countries”.
A statement from the embassy in Berlin cautioned that “an ideological view of China … will only intensify misunderstandings and misjudgments, and damage cooperation and mutual trust”.
The German paper noted that “whereas China’s dependencies on Europe are constantly declining, Germany’s dependencies on China have taken on greater significance in recent years”.
The government said it did not intend “to impede China’s economic progress and development”.
“At the same time, de-risking is urgently needed,” it said.
Berlin “is observing with concern how China is endeavouring to influence the international order in line with the interests of its single-party system and thus to relativise the foundations of the rules-based international order, such as the status of human rights”.
However Germany also highlighted potential for greater cooperation, noting for example that “it will not be possible to overcome the climate crisis without China”.
Source: CNA
