Germany's New Government: Business as Usual with China
Germany's new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has had his first telephone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Scholz, who succeeded Angela Merkel as chancellor on December 8, pledged to strengthen economic ties with China, but he failed to mention human rights or the destruction of democracy in Hong Kong. The telephone call will disappoint those who had hoped that Germany's new government — a three-way coalition consisting of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) — would break with the past and take distance from Merkel's policy of appeasing dictators and sacrificing human rights on the altar of financial gain. The call raises the question of who will determine Germany's China policy: Chancellor Scholz (SPD), who advocates for pragmatism and continuity, or Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (Greens), who is critical of China and has called for a values-based foreign policy and the implementation of Western ideas of human rights and the rule of law. A 50-word German readout of the telephone call, which was held on December 21, stated that Scholz and Xi talked about "the deepening of the bilateral relationship and economic relations" and "the development of EU-China relations." A 950-word readout of the conversation published by China's state-run news agency Xinhua provided additional details, including apparent pledges by Scholz "to inherit and advance Germany-China friendship and cooperation" and "to work with China in the spirit of mutual respect and mutual trust to push for further development of the Germany-China all-round strategic partnership." The Chinese readout added: "Scholz said that he hopes the EU-China investment agreement will enter into force at an early date, and that Germany is ready to work with China to uphold multilateralism in international affairs." That statement is problematic in several ways. The European Parliament recently froze the EU-China trade deal, and it is unlikely that the agreement will be ratified anytime soon, regardless of what Scholz may have promised. Moreover, the Chinese and the Europeans have mutually exclusive understandings of the term multilateralism. Broadly speaking, the Europeans view multilateralism as strengthening existing structures, including the United Nations system, to enforce a global rule-based liberal order enshrined in binding international treaties. By contrast, China views multilateralism as counterbalancing the dominance of a liberal international order. China-led multilateralism has been described as "an interim arrangement in China's drive to acquire regional and global dominance." German Coalition AgreementBoth the German and the Chinese readouts of the phone call omit any mention of human rights. If Scholz promised to advance bilateral economic relations without linking them to the protection of human rights, it would be a direct violation of Germany's coalition agreement, which pledged to make human rights the centerpiece of German foreign policy. Strangely, Foreign Minister Baerbock has not commented on the statements attributed to Chancellor Scholz. The 178-page coalition agreement was presented with great fanfare in Berlin on November 24 after two months of haggling (negotiators reportedly spent "hours" debating single sentences). It contains eight main sections that focus on a panoply of domestic and foreign policy issues to be pursued over the next four years. Human rights feature prominently:
Xinjiang is a remote autonomous region in northwestern China that is home to approximately 12 million mostly Muslim Uyghurs, a Turkic ethnic group native to the area. Human rights experts say that the Chinese Communist Party has detained at least one million Uyghurs in up to 380 internment camps, where they are subject to torture, mass rapes, forced labor and sterilizations. Beijing is accused of seeking to forcibly eliminate the Uyghur identity in its quest to create a unitary Chinese state. Uyghurs are the second-largest ethnic group in China after the Han people, who lay claim to the Xinjiang region. EU-China Investment DealThe Merkel government, apparently under pressure from German industry, largely ignored human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In December 2020, just hours before the end of Germany's six-month EU presidency, Merkel — together with French President Emmanuel Macron, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel (other EU countries were excluded from the negotiations) — hastily concluded the so-called EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The lopsided agreement, which ostensibly aims to level the economic and financial playing field by providing European companies with improved access to the Chinese market, actually allows China to continue to restrict investment opportunities for European companies in many strategic sectors. The deal also lacks meaningful enforcement mechanisms for issues that the EU claims to care about, such as climate change and human rights, including forced labor. In March 2021, the European Union, the United Kingdom and Canada, presumably under pressure from the United States, announced (here, here and here) that they had imposed sanctions on Chinese officials accused of Uyghur-related human rights abuses in Xinjiang. China responded by imposing sanctions (here, here and here) on more than two dozen European, British and Canadian lawmakers, academics and think tanks. In May 2021, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly (599 votes in favor, 30 against and 58 abstentions) to halt ratification of the CAI until Beijing lifts sanctions on European lawmakers, academics and think tanks. The move, a rare display of fortitude by an institution notorious for vacillation, reflected a hardening stance in Europe toward the Chinese Communist Party. If Scholz indeed promised Xi to advance the CAI, as China claims, Germany's new government would be at odds with the European Parliament, the EU's only directly elected institution. Germany's Overdependence on ChinaChina is Germany's biggest trading partner, with €212 billion in goods exchanged in 2020, according to the German Foreign Ministry. More than 5,000 German companies operate in China, according to the German Chamber of Commerce in China. Some German companies have become so dependent on the Chinese market that they cannot do without it. For instance, China accounted for roughly half of Volkswagen's global car sales during the first nine months of 2021. On December 20, a day before the Scholz-Xi telephone call, Volkswagen's Chairman of the Board, Herbert Diess, admitted that the company is utterly dependent on China: "We need more cooperation and presence in China, not less! It would be very damaging if Germany or the EU wanted to decouple from China." Diess wrote the post on LinkedIn, a U.S.-owned social media network. In October, Microsoft announced that it was shutting down LinkedIn in China due to pressure from the Chinese government. Volkswagen operates a car factory in Xinjiang. During a recent interview with the BBC, Diess claimed that he did not know about the detention of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. When the BBC correspondent explained it to him, Diess responded: "I am not aware of that." Volkswagen, which was founded by the German Nazi party in 1937 and used forced labor in its factories during World War II, has been accused of using forced Uyghur labor at its plant in Xinjiang. In an interview with the BBC, Volkswagen's CEO in China, Stephan Wollenstein, defended the company's presence in Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, where it runs a factory with 600 workers, producing up to 20,000 vehicles a year:
When asked whether he could be absolutely certain of that claim and give an assurance that none of the Urumqi workforce — of which around 25% is made up of Uyghurs and other minorities — had been in a Chinese detention camp, Wollenstein admitted that he could not.
The China Director of Human Rights Watch, Sophie Richardson, called on Diess to allow independent human rights observers to have "unfettered access" to Volkswagen's plant in Xinjiang. The British historian Timothy Garton Ash noted that Volkswagen cannot afford to criticize the Chinese government. In an opinion article published by the Guardian, he wrote:
Old habits, especially economically beneficial ones, are hard to break. On December 22, the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce warned the Lithuanian government that German investors may be forced to close factories in Lithuania if Vilnius does not accede to Chinese demands that it rename a representative office of the Taiwanese government. On December 1, China blocked all imports from Lithuania and ordered multinational companies to sever ties with the Baltic country or face being shut out of the Chinese market. The extraordinary sanctions, which amount to a full economic boycott of Lithuania, are in retaliation for the country's decision to allow Taiwan to open a representative office in its capital, Vilnius. Taiwan has other offices in Europe and the United States, but they use the name of its capital city, Taipei, due to the host countries' preference to avoid any semblance of treating Taiwan as a separate country. Beijing insists that the democratically self-ruled island is a part of the territory of the communist People's Republic of China and has no right to the trappings of a state. Lithuanian President Gitanas Nausėda says that his country will not capitulate to bullying from China and that he is committed to defending the principles and values of democracy from attack. On December 17, the Federation of German Industries (Bundesverband der Deutschen Industrie, BDI), a powerful business lobby, lashed out at China:
The BDI also criticized Lithuania for being "out of step" with EU policy: "It remains important to maintain economic relations with China on a high level." Bewilderment and ConsternationAnalysts, lawmakers and other observers who had been hoping that Germany's new government would usher in a change of direction regarding China have expressed disappointment at news of the Scholz-Xi telephone call. French Asia expert Antoine Bondaz tweeted that the German Chancellery should have published more details about the call:
The South China Morning Post, a Hong Kong-based English-language newspaper, reported that Xi reminded Scholz that China has been Germany's largest trading partner in each of the past five years:
Jakub Janda, director of the Prague-based European Values think tank, tweeted:
The German newsmagazine Spiegel wrote that Xi, by seeking a "direct line" to Scholz, was "taking the lead" against Foreign Minister Baerbock:
The German newsmagazine Focus agreed. It wrote that "between the lines," Xi "took a shot" at Baerbock. China expert Mareike Ohlberg tweeted:
German political scientist, Andreas Fulda, an expert on EU-China relations, concluded:
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute.  |
Posts
