In the Bundestag, Foreign Minister Baerbock spoke in unusually clear terms about the impressions she had in China. Her meeting with human rights activists was kept secret.
One advantage of tightly scheduled trips abroad is that you don’t have to comment on everything that’s making the headlines at home. Or just read. As Annalena Bärbock (Greens) is in the Bundestag on Wednesday after her six-day trip to China, South Korea and the G-7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Japan to answer the questions of the MPs, she finds it easy to counter those of Jürgen Hardt (CDU).
Hardt quotes from a China paper by the Seeheimer circle of Baerbock’s coalition partner SPD, which made headlines just in time for their talks in Beijing, at least in Berlin. The peaks of the Foreign Office and the (also Green-led) Federal Ministry of Economics from case to case, Hardt quotes as saying that the focus is more on the domestic symbolic power of the measures taken than on far-sighted politics. He thinks that is an absolute disavowal of her role as a minister and that it is a shame for Germany, says Hardt.
How can they still be in China represent a position when it is being thwarted at the same time by coalition partners? Baerbock thanks you for reading. For security reasons, she locked her two cell phones in a suitcase in China and was not yet able to read the paper. So now you know what’s in it. Period, topic closed. The fact that she left China again on Saturday is another matter.
“More aggressive and repressive”
The Foreign Minister then uses the questions to share her impressions of her trip. It is very clear, especially with a view to China, whether you like to hear that from the Seeheimers or not. In principle, the description of the German relationship applies to Beijing the triad that the country is a partner, competitor and systemic rival. Unfortunately, she got the impression “that the aspect of systemic rivals is increasing, not only because China is more aggressive towards the outside world, but also more repressive towards the inside,” says Baerbock. It was “really more than shocking in some cases”.
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As was only revealed after leaving Beijing, Baerbock had also met human rights activists in China. Afterwards she had shown herself to be as impressed as she was worried. The fact that it was considered necessary not to include the meeting in the minister’s official daily routine and only confirm it briefly after her departure speaks for itself. Baerbock says in the Bundestag that China is Germany’s largest trading partner. We want to work together wherever possible. At the same time, Germany must minimize its risks and abandon naïve ideas, such as that trade relations automatically lead to political change. Another greeting towards SPD. For the China strategy, on which her ministry is responsible, she named the central point “that we ensure freedom and the rule of law in the long term” and “stand up for the international order with a clear stance”. It’s about “the freedom, prosperity and security of all of us”.
Almost at the end then, one asks AfD– MP why no one from his parliamentary group had ever been invited to accompany the foreign minister’s trips. Baerbock refers to their sovereignty in the decision to take MPs to represent the Federal Republic and the federal government in the world. An SPD MP was in China.
Source: FAZ