A large group of ministers will arrive in Berlin from Beijing next week. Civil rights activists call on Olaf Scholz to clearly protest against the oppression of Uyghurs, Tibetans and critical Hong Kongers.
What is China for Germany? “A trading partner, but rival in value,” said Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) at the presentation of the national security strategy this week. China itself is described as a “systemic rival” in the paper. The traffic light government pledged itself to a value-based foreign policy from the moment it was founded. What that means in concrete terms has so far remained rather vague. Human rights violations in China, for example, have not been discussed prominently for some time.