China and Germany After the 2021 Election: Between Continuity and Increasing Confrontation

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter presents and analyses various official statements, 2021 election programmes and party manifestos, media reports as well as public hearings with regard to the changing view of China in the German public discourse. While the importance of economic interests is still the overarching topic in German-Chinese relations (China has been Germany`s most important trading partner since 2015), there has been a shift towards a more critical stance with regard to human rights issues in recent years. Germany was also the driving force behind the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) with China, which the EU signed in December 2020 under Germany’s presidency of the EU Council but so far never ratified.After the formation of a new SPD led government under chancellor Olaf Scholz, the two smaller coalition partners, the Alliance 90/The Greens, and the FDP, are said to have a much more critical view of China’s human rights issues. In particular, the new German foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock has publicly vowed to change Germany’s China policy. While Germany has remained within the hedging zone a shift from “economic pragmatism” to “soft balancing” can be observed, most noticeably in political terms: in particular, the new foreign minister Annalena Baerbock stresses the necessity for a closer cooperation both with the United States, but also a common policy of the EU towards China. Thus Germany, and the EU in general, seems to have shifted from “economic pragmatism” to “dominance denial” since the new government came into power, and the war in Ukraine has led to an even closer alliance of Germany, with the EU and the United States.