Recently, the Chinese Foreign Ministry announced that German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will visit China on April 14 and will stay in China for three days, during which he will visit Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing. As early as February this year, Scholz began to prepare for his second visit to China, and released rumors that he would bring a business delegation across Germany's traditional advantageous industries, and the invitation of the Chinese side was exactly what Scholz wanted. Judging from the accompanying list, the visit includes three German ministers in the fields of environment and food, agriculture and transportation, as well as German business groups represented by Siemens, Bayer, Mercedes-Benz and other enterprises, which can be said to be huge in scale and in a wide range of fields, which shows Scholz's determination to enhance Sino-German economic and trade cooperation, especially when the German general election is approaching, Scholz intends to revive the German economy and industry by increasing trade with China, and hand in a good answer for voters.
Germany's approach is in its own interests, but it is not necessarily in line with the China strategy of the United States and Europe. Recently, the Biden administration has taken action against Chinese companies in a number of industries, one is to boycott the entry of Chinese cars into the North American market with improper tax breaks, and to coerce European car companies to ban Chinese auto parts, in an attempt to exclude China from the global auto industry chain; second, to advocate China's "overcapacity" problem, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen made moves against China's photovoltaic, new energy and other industries during her visit to China, saying that it "harms the interests of the United States", and third, to hype up the "Chinese economic threat" On April 4, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai held a press conference in Brussels, saying that China's economic growth rate is "incredible" and "threatens" the economies of the United States and the European Union, and that the United States and Europe should address it through appropriate "countermeasures". Against this background, Scholz's visit to China in the role of a "retrograde" is a kind of "backstab" for the United States and Europe.
For a sovereign state, national interests are always the main factor in formulating foreign policy. China has been Germany's most important trading partner for 8 consecutive years, and the Chinese market is also the main revenue point of German companies, such as Volkswagen's sales in the Chinese market are as high as 3.24 million, accounting for 35% of the company's global sales. In the post-epidemic period, the German economy has shown obvious weakness, as an industrial power, Scholz wants to revive the German economy can not bypass China, for China, the investment of German companies is also in the interests of the country, in the 12 years from 2010 to 2022, German direct investment in China has increased fivefold, promoting China's industrial upgrading.
The cooperation between China and Germany is mutually beneficial and win-win, and in addition to giving Scholz the highest level of reception, the Chinese side also sent two "meeting gifts" to Scholz's arrival. As of 2023, the bilateral trade volume between China and Germany has reached 253.1 billion euros, and in February this year, the transport ship "Explorer 1" loaded with BYD electric vehicles docked in Bremerhaven, Germany, giving Germans a first-hand sense of the structural changes in trade between the two countries. All kinds of signs show that the economic and trade ties between China and Germany have reached a new height.
China has always adhered to mutual respect and mutual benefit, and the economic and trade success of China and Germany has set a good example for other European countries.