The Tamesis
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz met with China’s top leaders on Wednesday after arriving in Beijing with a large trade delegation.
Merz wants to strengthen ties with Germany’s biggest trading partner, largely because Europe’s largest economy has been struggling.
Berlin and Beijing are looking to cement their decades-old economic ties at a time when U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariff blitz and other destabilizing foreign policy moves have stoked global chaos.
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China is the world’s second-largest economy and last year overtook the United States to become Germany’s largest trading partner, but Berlin also sees the communist-run country as a systemic rival to the West.
The two leaders reaffirmed their commitment to developing closer strategic ties, with Mertz saying he viewed the visit as a “great opportunity” to boost economic ties.
Chinese President Xi Jinping told Merz that he was willing to elevate bilateral relations to a “new level” and stressed that he “always attaches great importance to Sino-German relations.”
Merz also noted that he hoped joint consultations between the two governments, which had been interrupted by the change of government in Germany and the coronavirus pandemic, would resume “soon.”
But he is also expected to emphasize German and European interests in talks with Xi Jinping and urge him to put pressure on China’s ally Russia to end the war in Ukraine.
Seeking “fair” cooperation
Mertz is the latest in a series of Western leaders to make overtures to Beijing in recent months, including Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Mark Carneyas they recoil from Trump’s erratic policies, which are also expected to take effect from March 31.
Before leading a large business delegation to Beijing, Merz said export-reliant Germany needed “economic relations with all parts of the world.”
“But we should have no illusions,” he added, noting that China, a rival to the United States, now “claims the right to define a new multilateral order according to its own rules.”
Merz earlier met with Prime Minister Li Qiang at Beijing’s palatial Great Hall of the People, where he called for “fair” cooperation, and representatives from both sides signed agreements and memorandums of understanding, including on climate change and food security.
Li Keqiang clearly alluded to the United States, pointing out that “unilateralism and protectionism are on the rise and even prevalent in some countries and regions.”
“In this context, China and Germany, as two major economies with important influence in the world, should… jointly safeguard multilateralism and free trade,” Li said.
more confident
China under Xi Jinping has become more assertive on the world stage, building up its military, emphasizing autonomy from Taiwan and fiercely pushing back against criticism of its human rights record.
In a show of strength at a time of tension, Beijing has restricted exports of critical minerals used in products including microchips, wind turbines, electric vehicle batteries and weapons systems.
Last year, Beijing temporarily Stop exporting Nexperia chips to Europe After a dispute with the Dutch government.
More broadly, European companies complain about sluggish domestic demand in China; Flooding Europe with cheap goods through state subsidies and undervalued currencies.
Germany’s trade deficit with China hit a record 89 billion euros ($105 billion) last year.
China sees Germany as ‘anchor of stability’
While Trump has unsettled allies and rivals alike, China has also sought to project itself as a reliable partner and defender of the multilateral order.
China’s top diplomat Wang Yi told Merz at the Munich Security Conference this month that Beijing wanted to take relations between the two countries “to a new level” and wanted Germany to become “a stable pillar of strategic relations” with the EU.
Like his predecessors Angela Merkel and Olaf Scholz, Merz joins a ranks of business leaders that include executives from auto giants Volkswagen, BMW and Mercedes.
Merz will visit the Forbidden City in Beijing on Thursday, where a Mercedes factory will demonstrate self-driving cars.
The German Chancellor then went to Hangzhou, the center of artificial intelligence, and visited the robotics group Unitree and the German turbine manufacturer Siemens Energy.
German companies gave Merz a to-do list for the trip.
“We hope the Chancellor will clearly address issues such as excess capacity“Competition distortions and export controls on key raw materials,” said Wolfgang Niedermark of the Confederation of German Industry.
German and European companies in China not only “compete with highly innovative Chinese companies” but are also participants in “state-driven systemic competition.”
He said Merz should advocate for China to “carry out structural reforms to enhance domestic demand and fairer competitive conditions” and warned that if reforms were not carried out, there would be “a new trade conflict with the EU.”
- Further editing by Jim Pollard, AFP
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