Despite its brevity, the trip will not be a formality. Friday, November 4, Olaf Scholz will only stay eleven hours in Beijing, but, even before taking place, this first visit to China by the German Chancellor promises to be more perilous than all those – twelve in total – that Angela Merkel has made. in this country during his sixteen years in power (2005-2021).
Across the Rhine, there are many critics against this quick trip willingly considered untimely. According to the leader of the German right, Friedrich Merz (Christian Democratic Union), Olaf Scholz ‘Couldn’t choose a worse time’ to go to Beijing, less than two weeks after the 20e Chinese Communist Party Congress, “where violent threats were made against Taiwan and where President Xi Jinping’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, dragged himself out of the hall in front of the eyes of the whole world”. Even within the German government, the date of this official visit, the first by a European leader to China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, is causing serious unease. “It was the Chancellor who decided to make this trip at that time”commented the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Annalena Baerbock (Greens), Tuesday 1er November, from Tashkent.
Twelve days after Mr. Xi was reappointed for a third term as head of the Communist Party, Mr. Scholz’s round trip to Beijing also takes place a week after the Chancellor gave his green light for a stake in the Chinese public group Cosco in a container terminal in the Port of Hamburg. Even if it was recorded that Cosco could only acquire 25% of the shares, and not 35% as it wished, this decision aroused strong resistance within the German government, no less than six ministers having spoken out against an operation that could open the way to the takeover of a strategic infrastructure by a foreign group.
The fact that Mr. Scholz led Hamburg from 2011 to 2018 did not help matters. “A mayor of Hamburg can do foreign policy like a merchant. But to do so when you are German Chancellor is to violate the interests of Germany and Europe.writes Thorsten Benner, director of the Berlin think tank Global Public Policy Institute, in an article published Monday, October 31 in the American magazine Foreign Policy.
“No clear strategy”
A week before Mr. Scholz’s visit to Beijing, the green light given to Cosco is seen as a very worrying signal by those who believe that Germany must be much more firm vis-à-vis China than it was not under Mme Merkel. “Scholz runs after a China that no longer exists. While China has changed profoundly, Scholz is doing ‘Merkel as usual'”, deplores German MEP Reinhard Bütikofer (Greens), chairman of the European Parliament’s delegation for relations with China. On the part of this former president of the German Greens (2002-2008), a member party of the coalition of Social Democrat Olaf Scholz, the accusation is severe. “The coalition contract we signed at the end of 2021 makes it clear that Germany must be much more demanding of China. It must be believed that the Chancellor does not feel bound by this commitment.regrets Mr. Bütikofer.
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