“STRESS TEST”
Tuesday’s talks between the two governments is “a stress test on whether genuine partnership between Berlin and Beijing is still possible”, Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, told AFP.
“It’s open as to whether Germany continues to play the game of pretending there is broad agreement with Beijing… or whether it chooses a new path of straight talk and limiting the final statement to areas where there is a genuine path forward for cooperation,” he added.
Spiegel magazine said that “finding the right and appropriate way to deal with China is almost impossible”.
China has been accused of stirring regional instability with threats against Taiwan and of rights abuses against Uyghurs, while refusing to distance itself from Russia’s Vladimir Putin. On the other hand, it is “important to continue to have a relationship of trust” with Beijing, Spiegel noted.
“Managing this balancing act without suffering a hernia is a real challenge” not just at Tuesday’s talks, but “in the years and decades to come”, it said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, one of the most strident critics of Beijing’s human rights policies, has signalled that the way to handle the delicate situation was to boost cooperation with China on areas on which both sides can agree, such as the climate.
But on economic issues, Scholz’s government has repeatedly underlined that ending reliance is the key.
Speaking at a major German industry event on Monday, Scholz said the “G7 has no interest in preventing China’s economic rise”.
“At the same time, we are looking carefully at preventing dangerous economic reliance in the future.”
Addressing the same event, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg noted that many had previously thought that buying gas from Russia was “a purely commercial decision, only to learn the hard way”.
“We must not make the same mistake once again with other authoritarian regimes, not least China,” he warned.
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