German Chancellor Visits Beijing Amid Lingering Questions of Rivalry

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, leading a group of CEOs from German companies, visited Beijing on Nov. 4 and met with the head of the Chinese communist regime Xi Jinping, drawing criticism in Germany and from the international community.

Scholtz was the first foreign leader to meet with Xi after he secured a third term as the head of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) last month.

While other Western government leaders have pledged to take a tougher stance on the regime, 12 German business executives accompanied Scholz to visit Beijing. Most of these companies, such as Volkswagen, BMW, and Siemens, are leading companies in Germany and have been in the Chinese market for a long time.

Scholz said to Xi during their meeting that China is an important trading partner for Germany and for Europe as a whole, according to the CCP’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Germany firmly opposes decoupling, it said, showing how the CCP interpreted the visit. Germany stands ready for closer trade and economic cooperation with China and supports more mutual investment between Chinese and German businesses.

In return, Xi specifically approved the vaccines produced by Germany’s BioNtech and Pfizer to be used in China. On the same day, China Aviation Supplies Corporation announced that they and European Airbus have just signed a bulk purchase agreement for 140 aircraft, with a total value of about $17 billion.

Syringes in front of displayed BioNtech and Pfizer logos on Nov. 10, 2020. (Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters)

Scholz’s Beijing trip sparked controversy.

The British Financial Times reported on Oct. 30 that critics believe that “instead of deepening economic ties with authoritarian regimes, Germany and the E.U. should decouple from them.”

Song Guocheng, a senior researcher at the Center for International Relations at National Chengchi University in Taiwan told The Epoch Times that the entire E.U. is re-examining the dependence of the E.U. on the Chinese market.

Scholtz’s visit “shows that Germany basically has no way to get rid of its dependence on the Chinese market. Because its trade with China is a relatively high-end structural relationship, which is mainly concentrated in automobiles, machinery, chemicals, Medical and other industries,” he said.

Questionable Timing

Currently, the German government is drafting a new China strategy.

According to the German business daily Handelsblatt, an official German China strategy is expected to be officially released in the spring of 2023, which will be tougher than former chancellor Merkel’s China policy. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock warned Scholz ahead of his China trip and called for a tougher China strategy. When Baerbock took office last year, she publicly criticized China’s human rights record and emphasized that China is Germany’s “institutional rival.”

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock delivers a speech during the congress of the Green Party (Buendnis 90/Die Gruenen) in Bonn, Western Germany, on Oct. 15, 2022. (Ina Fassbender/ AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese economist Li Hengqing told The Epoch Times that Xi wanted to meet with foreign government leaders to mark his achievement in securing a third term in the party congress.

“Two months ago, when Scholz announced that he was planning to visit Beijing, Germany and the European Union, including NATO Ministers, expressed their opposition,” Li said, adding because the implication of the visit is to kowtow to Xi, especially when Xi would have just secured his third term.

Li said Scholz’s visit shows a two-sided mentality: “On the one hand, he particularly wants to preserve the interests of German companies in China. But he also knows that China differs from the Western world on human rights issues. He also knows that the CCP has been helping Russia behind the scenes.

“So, he’s in a dilemma,” Li said.

Criticism From Human Rights Groups

Scholz’s China trip has sparked strong criticism from human rights organizations and activists.

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, said at a press conference in Berlin on Nov. 1 that the German chancellor’s decision to visit Beijing “to pay tribute to Xi Jinping is a choice that totally ignores the suffering of millions of Uyghurs.”

Hanno Schedler, a spokesman for the Society for Threatened Peoples said that during the German Chancellor’s visit to China, he shouldn’t forget the human rights situation in Tibet and Inner Mongolia, let alone the deprivations of freedom of the press and speech that Hong Kong people endure.

Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uyghur Congress, gestures as he speaks during a demonstration against China during its Universal Periodic Review by the Human Rights Council in front of the United Nations Office in Geneva, Switzerland, on Nov. 6, 2018. (Denis Balibouse/Reuters)

Qin Jie, a dissident in exile in Germany, told The Epoch Times, “I think Scholz’s visit to China is a symbol, representing the economic dependence of Western countries on China.

“This dependence has brought prosperity to Western countries in the past few decades,” he said. “But all this is based on the pain and blood and tears of the Chinese people.

“I hope that the governments of Germany and the United States can realize that their appeasement will only infuse blood to the CCP bandits, and will only prolong the suffering of the Chinese people,” he said. “It will always put Western countries under threat by the CCP dictatorship.”

Qin said that he is worried that even though there is internal opposition, the mainstream in Germany is still swayed by the CCP, and that Germany will continue to rely on the Chinese market for a long time in the future.

“They will still choose their interests,” he said. “Their standard of living is based on the huge market [of China].”

Li Xin’an and Luo Ya contributed to this report.