On September 27, local time, the results of the German general election were released, and the Social Democratic Party defeated Merkel's Coalition party by a narrow margin of 1.6 percentage points. According to German law, a new chancellor will be born in early December, and seeing that her term of office is counting down, Merkel, who has finally unloaded her burden on China's fate, can't help but reveal her heart:
Decoupling from China was "too naïve" for us at that time.
Merkel
Merkel made the comments in an interview with Reuters on Wednesday.
Merkel was the first to admit that as China's power and influence continue to grow, Germany will have to rethink some of its partnerships: "Maybe at first we were naïve about the relationship between some of our partners, and these days we will observe more closely, which is right." ”
The "naïveté" mentioned by Merkel here refers to the various suppressions and smears against China by the Merkel government.
What many people have not noticed is that as a defeated country in World War II, the Attitude of the Germans towards new China has always been quite cautious, although it is not friendly, but at least it has not carried out much attack on China. However, after Merkel came to power in 2004, the German government's attitude toward China began to plummet: Germany once became the global base camp of "Tibetan independence" elements, and the interference with the 2008 Beijing Olympic torch relay incident was especially worst in Germany.
In 2018, Merkel openly declared vigilance against Chinese infiltration into the Balkans, saying china was posing an economic challenge to Europe. As soon as this remark came out, various Politicians, enterprises and organizations in Germany followed the trend and made anti-China remarks, and for a while, Germany almost became an anti-China power with the same name as the United States in the Trump era.
Why is Merkel so anti-China? In fact, this has to do with Merkel's understanding of politics.
Compared with politicians who either like to be sensational or ideologically strong, Merkel, who was born in East Germany and experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, does not really care much about the "ass" problem of the difference between the East and the West, in her view, let Germany end the status quo that has been controlled by the United States, and become the real European boss in the new century is the ultimate ideal that she should pursue as the German chancellor.
In order to achieve this goal, Merkel's governing means are thus full of strong realism and pragmatic ideas, so we will see:
When the issue of Tibetan independence touched the sensitive "human rights" nerves of Europeans, Merkel realized that this was a perfect opportunity to win the favor of the German people and Europe as a whole.
When Trump in the United States began to talk about the so-called Chinese economic threat and resonated widely in Europe, Merkel understood that following Trump's anti-China would be a pretty good deal;
When China began to strengthen bilateral exchanges with Eastern Europe, Merkel, who interpreted this behavior as "shaking Germany's dominance over Eastern Europe", immediately began to fight back mercilessly against China.
Sino-German relations
But as Merkel herself put it, Merkel and her self-righteous "pragmatism" on China are clearly too "naïve": under the active "death" of The Merkel government, China's economic investment in Germany fell into a trough in 2019 – only $500 million in Germany in the first half of that year, an 80% drop from the same period last year.
It should be known that Germany's GDP growth rate in 2018 was only 1.5%, and by 2019, this growth rate fell directly to 0.6%. Offending China finally ushered in a rare crisis of trust at the end of her reign.
Merkel and Trump
It is precisely because of this "black history" that Merkel today is more like a self-examination of her past China policy when talking about China.
On the controversial issue of intellectual property, Merkel said that despite fears of so-called "espionage" and "technology theft" from China, it is clearly overcorrected to completely "decouple" from China, and "we can learn a lot from each other." In my opinion, complete decoupling is wrong and harmful to us."
Merkel suggested that the next cabinet should maintain discussions with China on issues such as intellectual property, "whether it's about Chinese students in Germany or German companies doing business in China."
On the issue of information security that has been single-handedly stirred up by the Americans, Merkel said that Germany will develop new IT security regulations to protect its own information security, but this threshold should not be raised for a particular company" What we need is an open system that evaluates everyone to the same standards.
In the field of scientific and technological innovation, Merkel also said that today's European countries are not good enough, but Europe must first do a good job in scientific and technological innovation before it can point fingers at other people's intellectual property problems.
From this speech, it is not difficult to see that Merkel, who is leaving office in a month, has indeed put aside all caution and made suggestions to the younger generations purely with the sense of responsibility of an old politician and his own personal experience: "Decoupling from China does more harm than good."
But the question is, will the Social Democrats, who are now indulging in election victories, listen to this bitter mouth from their "opponents"?
As early as 1863, the German Workers' Federation, the predecessor of the German Social Democratic Party, was established. Because of this working-class origin and the influence of Marxist socialism, the ancient Social Democratic Party has long adhered to labor and social justice, paid attention to social welfare, and was the benchmark party of the German left.
As a result, the SPD has always been very friendly to China compared to the restless Greens and the Coalition Party, which has begun to split with rightism within. Shortly after the end of the election vote, Schweitzel, a member of the SPD presidium, publicly stated that the development of relations with China is the most important diplomatic issue in contemporary Germany, that the SPD will strengthen dialogue with China and continue to maintain close ties with China, and that Germany's relations with China will not change suddenly due to the end of the Merkel era.
German Social Democratic Party assembly
In addition, the SPD's candidate for the presidency, Scholz, is himself the deputy chancellor and finance minister of the Merkel government, and is highly consistent with Merkel in terms of governing philosophy and attitude toward China, so the new German cabinet should not be too worrying in terms of China policy.
But the paradox lies in this, although nearly two months have passed since the election victory, in addition to affirming Merkel's China policy, almost perfunctory claim that she may inherit these policies, Scholz has not yet pointed out his own diplomatic concept of China.
In an interview just after the election, in the face of reporters' questions about "if you become prime minister, will china policy change", Scholz directly played Tai Chi: first acknowledging that Asia has risen and made great progress in the economy, then declaring that the world needs a way of communication that everyone agrees, and finally saying that a strong, independent Europe is the premise and foundation of world peace.
Anyway, I don't mention the word "China."
Scholz
In addition, since the share of the vote did not reach one-third, the Social Democrats had to form a coalition cabinet with other parties, such as the Union Party, which meant that Scholz would not necessarily become the new Chancellor of Germany due to the reasons for compromising with other parties. Among the candidates for the presidency of other parties, Rashet from the Coalition Party is inexperienced and may be stabbed in the face of relations with China, while Belberk from the Green Party has long threatened to be resolutely anti-China, in short, none of them are fuel-saving lamps.
Of course, if there is no accident, Scholz will still become Merkel's successor as he wishes, and it will not be the turn of other cattle, ghosts and snake gods to play. But Scholz, who is already the most composed and sophisticated of all candidates, must maintain such caution in his attitude toward China, and the message behind this is actually quite dangerous:
In Germany and even in Europe as a whole, anti-China has become a general trend, and even if they are sincerely friendly to China, moderates like Scholz must make considerable concessions to this trend of thought, and must carefully choose their own words when talking about Topics related to China.
And merkel said these heartfelt words at this moment, even if Scholz can hear, it is likely that they can only be regarded as not heard.
Scholz and Merkel
But as I said before, Merkel's philosophy of governance boils down to the word "pragmatic." Although she once spoke ill of China during her tenure, with this pragmatic spirit and professional vision as a true political master, Merkel was also the first Western leader since the new century to realize what China's development means to her country.
Therefore, behind the short anti-China black history, Merkel's attitude toward China is generally quite positive, and this "pragmatic positive" is the reason why Sino-German relations have remained generally good in the Merkel era.
However, now that Merkel is really leaving, without the leadership of this "adult", how far can germany go to face China with a "naïve" attitude again?
Germany's future skies may be doomed to a haze by offending China.