Hello friends.
Today, I would like to talk to you about German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's visit to China.
As I mentioned earlier, Scholz will be leading a large economic delegation to China this time, which is very different from the past few years.
Scholz will visit three cities, arriving in Chongqing on the 14th, Shanghai on the 15th, and Beijing on the 16th.
According to the information available so far, when Scholz arrives in Beijing, he will obviously be received by China's top leaders and Chinese premiers.
Now, I'm going to talk about a few questions:
First, from a horizontal point of view, what is the difference between Scholz's trip and the United States?
Second, from a longitudinal point of view, how is Germany's current China strategy different from what it has always been in the past, and what changes have taken place in Scholz's China strategy since he took office more than two years ago?
Why compare both horizontally and vertically?
First of all, on the horizontal front, the United States is waging a new round of economic containment and military encirclement against China, especially after US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen concluded her visit to China.
I estimate that in the past few days, the Biden team has been conducting intensive consultations, and the result of the consultations must be that Yellen's visit to China is very dissatisfied, and the United States will definitely have corresponding countermeasures in the next step.
So, we're going to look at the differences or commonalities in Germany from a horizontal perspective.
Second, in the vertical aspect, whether it is from the Kohl era, the Schmidt era, or the Merkel era, Germany has actually been implementing a rather rational and pragmatic China policy that is different from that of the United States and Europe.
So what are the differences in Germany's China policy now?
In the past two years or so, since Scholz came to power, there have actually been considerable degrees of disputes and differences between the "big and two small" federal governments within the federal government in terms of China policy and strategy.
So, has this problem been solved now?
01
To cut a long story short, let's return to the first topic, which is horizontal differences.
I believe that Scholz's visit to China will be similar to the United States in terms of horizontal aspects, and the "differences" will show a considerable degree of difference.
How can we say this? This can be seen from the huge economic delegation led by Scholz this time.
Scholz's last visit to China was in November 2022, when he did not stay overnight in China due to the pandemic, but made a same-day trip, and did not bring an economic delegation with him at that time. For nearly a year and a half, Scholz did not visit China.
Frankly, this is quite different from his predecessor, Angela Merkel. When Merkel was still in office, he visited China 13 times in 12 years, basically once a year.
When Scholz announced his visit to China, the German business community was almost eager and elated, rushing to sign up for the visit.
To a considerable extent, this reflects the difficulty of Germany to decouple from China economically, and it can be seen that German companies such as BASF and Siemens have not only not withdrawn their investments in China, but are also increasing their capital.
German Economy Minister Habeck recently proposed that German companies complete economic decoupling from China by 2027, so that in the event of a war between the two sides of the strait in 2027, Germany's economic sanctions against China do not have to pay the price, but obviously, this point has not been achieved at all.
As for Yellen's question of China's overcapacity, the Germans ostensibly said that they would raise it with China, but according to the information we have received, Germany only mentions it symbolically, and they will not have a substantial touch.
At the moment, we understand that there are several symbolic issues on the German side:
First, the Taiwan issue;
second, human rights;
Third, the issue of China's assistance to Russia.
These three issues are somewhat similar to the Kohl era and the Merkel era, and Germany once had an initiative called "promoting China's progress through trade".
At that time, Germany would also have some human rights lists, but only symbolically, and sometimes even privately stuffed the lists to China.
However, on the other hand, we can still talk about whatever we need to talk about, and the main thing is the economic cooperation between the two sides.
Therefore, I think Scholz's visit to China this time is a continuation of the style of the Kohl and Merkel era to a certain extent.
And at this point, it will cause dissatisfaction in the United States to a considerable extent.
So some of the differences between the United States and Germany in their policies toward China, I think we can observe all the way from the arrival of Scholz in China tomorrow (April 14).
02
As I have already discussed, I believe that Germany will show a considerable degree of horizontal differentiation compared to the United States.
In terms of longitudinal comparison, I think there are obvious differences from the Kohl and Merkel eras, but the similarities are also obvious.
The reason for the obvious difference is that the overall framework covering the relationship between China and Germany is different from that of the past.
Over the past few years, the relationship between the Western world and China as a whole has deteriorated, and the reasons for this are very complex, and everyone understands it, so I will not repeat it.
This will inevitably affect the relationship between China and Germany, so in recent years, both political relations and people-to-people relations between China and Germany have been greatly declining. The perception of China among the German people, intellectuals, and other quarters is also declining rapidly.
This has something to do with the nonsense and unwarranted hype of the Greens and the Liberal Democrats.
But Scholz himself is a member of the SPD, which is a party in the traditional sense, and he is not as stunned and unscrupulous as the Greens, so he will still implement a decent policy, but this has not been easy in the past two years or so.
On December 8, 2021, when Scholz's government first took office, we asked the question: is Germany's foreign policy in the hands of the Chancellery or the Foreign Office?
As things stand, the major strategies are still in the hands of the Chancellery, but some of the specific implementation is sometimes in the Foreign Office, and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock sometimes contradicts the Chancellery, but now Scholz basically controls the overall situation.
As for the Ministry of Economy, at least in terms of China strategy, Habeck asked German companies to complete the decoupling from China by 2027, etc., which now seems to be obviously impossible.
Habeck and Baerbock had to bow their heads in the face of reality, and this reality was not so much the reality of Scholz and the SPD as it was the reality of the German business community.
Therefore, compared with the past, compared with the traditional German work in China, the general environment has changed, and we must pay enough attention to this.
In terms of specific details, I personally believe that in the current situation of a three-party coalition government of "one large and two small" in Germany, Scholz can be said to have basically gained a firm foothold.
Therefore, the visit of the German business delegation to China reminds us to a certain extent of the Kohl and Merkel era from the 90s of the last century to the beginning of this century, when they went to China to do business, and this situation seems to be back.
Of course, due to the changes in the general environment, we should not overestimate the visit of a large delegation led by the German Chancellor to China.
The changes in the general environment have led to changes in many aspects, such as the German media and intellectuals, who were originally full of criticism of China, are now even more critical and prejudiced against China.
However, the German people do not know much about China, and they have been misled by the media and intellectuals for a long time, so that the German people will have more misunderstandings about China, and they will also be affected by the general environment of the development of Sino-Western relations.
Therefore, from a macro point of view, Sino-German relations are not optimistic; from a micro point of view, Scholz's SPD has basically gained a firm foothold and occupies the leading position in China policy, and the business community cannot decouple, so Sino-German relations are still rational and pragmatic.
Therefore, Germany seems to have some confidence and ability to compete with the United States, but it remains to be seen to what extent it can compete.
In this sense, we should not be very pessimistic about Sino-German relations, the Germans are still rational and pragmatic, but we cannot continue to use the old Huang calendar of 20 or 30 years ago to explain the present and future Sino-German relations, and we must still be more cautious in every step.
Finally, I would like to make a suggestion to the Chinese side.
In fact, in this case, we might as well give more bargaining chips to the objects that can be fought for, this bargaining chips mainly refer to economic bargaining chips, of course, internally, we also try our best to make some progressive adjustments, as long as the economic interests are obtained, many problems will be relatively eased.
In this way, we may be able to use Germany as a breakthrough.
In addition, this year marks the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and France, and in May this year, the Chinese leader may visit France.
Proceeding from the two traditional countries of Germany and France, perhaps we will be able to build a relatively stable international united front when the overall situation is not optimistic.