Opinion | Germany’s China strategy reflects the country’s delicate balancing act

Looking beneath the veneer of rhetoric in Germany’s new China strategy, which accuses Beijing of following a more “assertive” conduct in world affairs, one sees that the strategy is really an act of political balancing short on concrete policies.

The German blueprint went down badly with the Chinese government, with a spokesman saying it “goes against the trend of the time and will only exacerbate the division of the world”. It could not be otherwise. Beijing cannot tolerate being depicted as a systemic rival in the political-economic sphere, a human rights offender in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Tibet, and a potential threat to world stability because of its military assertiveness in the China seas and the Taiwan Strait.

Taking a page from the European Commission’s critical stance on China, Berlin’s new strategy focuses on “de-risking”, rather than decoupling, from China. The ultimate goal is to eliminate any economic dependency on China, avoiding recent mistakes such as its heavy reliance on Russian oil and gas.

The problem for the government led by Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz is how to translate this concept into action. Scholz essentially said it was up to German businesses to consider their market options with regard to China.

German industries already know this well. A survey published last month by the German Chamber of Commerce in China revealed that companies had low expectations of a quick improvement in the Chinese business environment, given geopolitical tensions and Beijing’s drive for self-reliance.