Why German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's one-day visit to China is controversial

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s one-day trip to China has become “the most controversially debated visit in the country for the last 50 years”, according to Reinhard Butikofer, a German member of the European Parliament of the Green Party, a part of Scholz-led governing coalition in Berlin.

Scholz is scheduled to visit Beijing on Friday. He will be the first European leader to visit China since the beginning of the war between Russia and Ukraine, which Germany has firmly opposed by coming out in Ukraine’s support. Beijing, while diplomatically opposing the conflict at-large, has avoided unequivocal condemnation of Russian positions on the ongoing war.

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On Thursday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz wrote an Op-Ed in Politico, in which he justified his overtures to China by saying that China will play a key role on the world stage in the future. “But this justifies neither the calls by some to isolate China, nor a quest for hegemonic Chinese dominance, or even a Sino-centric world order,” Scholz wrote.

“We are far — too far — from reciprocity in relations between China and Germany, whether in regard to market access for businesses, to licenses, to the protection of intellectual property or issues of legal certainty and equal treatment for our nationals. We will continue to insist on reciprocity. And where China refuses to allow this reciprocity, it cannot be without consequences,” Olaf Scholz wrote.

The controversy

In an unprecedented moment of domestic-international imbalance, six German ministries came out in firm opposition against China-based Cosco’s acquisition of a stake in a Hamburg container terminal last month. The deal went through anyway on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s insistence, although on a compromise, that Cosco would take a 25 per cent stake instead of 35 per cent as was initially proposed.

Germany’s ruling alliance led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the Free Democrats was negotiated in 2019 on a principled consensus on critical, less dependent trade practices with respect to China. However, Scholz’s recent warming up with China in the run-up to its impending visit to Beijing has put him in stark opposition against his own allies.

China, Germany’s biggest trade partner

Despite the disputes between two countries, the trade ties remain crucial. China was Germany’s biggest trading partner in 2021 for the sixth consecutive year, its biggest single source of imports and its No. 2 export destination after the United States.

Scholz has pledged to use his trip to make the case for Chinese moderation and assistance in calming the situations with Ukraine and Taiwan.

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