War in Ukraine, Taiwan, human rights: During his visit to Beijing, Olaf Scholz was not sparing in criticizing his host. But does one take the chancellor seriously in China?
Munich/Beijing – Third page, bottom right: On the day of Olaf Scholz’s visit to Beijing, China’s party newspaper dedicated the people’s newspaper, the German Chancellor just a few lines with biographical details. “Law studies, lawyer” can be read there, and: “Scholz is married.” Not a word about all the controversies that have dominated the debates in Germany in recent days. The fact that Scholz’s visit to Xi Jinping is controversial in this country was only revealed in the English-language propaganda sheet Global Times which, among other things, quoted a Chinese expert as saying that Green Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had “failed” in office because she was prejudiced against China.
China’s state television also preferred to draw the picture of a harmonious friendship that could not falter so quickly. You saw Xi Jinping and Aolafu Shuoerci, as Olaf Scholz is known in China, sitting at a meter-long conference table in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing and exchanging pleasantries. Xi was pleased to note that the German chancellor was the first European leader to visit China after the party congress in late October. At the China Communist Party meeting, Xi was elected to a historic term as party leader and removed all his opponents from China’s top executive body. That’s another reason why Scholz’s visit to Germany was so controversial.
Scholz in Beijing: First corona test, then meeting with Xi Jinping
Olaf Scholz landed in Beijing early Friday morning. Airport employees in Covid protective suits rolled out the red carpet in front of the government plane, which the Chancellor was only allowed to step on after a corona test. While the Chancellor’s plane took off for interim parking in the direction of South Korea so that the crew didn’t have to be in quarantine, Scholz and his 60-strong entourage headed towards the city center. The Chancellor only had around eleven hours in China, leaving no time for the usual visits to the Forbidden City or photo ops at the Great Wall of China. Instead, they moved through the capital of the “zero Covid” country China in their own “bubble” that they had set up. Everyone who had personal contact with Scholz and his companions then had to be in quarantine for several days, including even the German ambassador in Beijing.
Xi Jinping himself received the Chancellor without a handshake, which was probably more due to the Chinese fear of corona than to an increasing distance between the two unequal politicians, who had spoken on the phone several times in the past few months and had met before when Scholz was still mayor in Hamburg . Xi first tried to emphasize what they had in common, speaking of wanting to lead the friendship between the two countries into the future 50 years after diplomatic relations were established. Xi has also noticed that Germany is currently reassessing its relationship with China and wants to free itself from economic dependencies as far as possible. Especially since Scholz himself wrote in a guest post before he left: “If China changes, the way we deal with China must also change.”
Possibly with those words in mind, Xi said political mutual trust is easy to destroy but difficult to rebuild. Xi even quoted former SPD chancellor Helmut Schmidt: Politicians should calmly accept what cannot be changed, courageously change what can be changed, and be clever in discerning the difference. In other words, the times when the West could hope to shape China according to its ideas are finally over.
Olaf Scholz: “It’s good and right that I’m here in Beijing today”
China’s outgoing Prime Minister Li Keqiang confidently confronted the Chancellor in front of press representatives. They talked to each other “openly, factually and honestly,” said Li, who will step down from office next March. He then referred to the role China is playing in combating climate change and in global food security. Nothing works without China, that was the message.
Scholz took twelve top managers with him to China, including from Volkswagen, BASF, BMW, Siemens and Deutsche Bank. Li promised them that they would find “common solutions” to the concerns of German entrepreneurs who are complaining about an increasingly difficult environment. The way Li said it sounded more patronizing than genuinely concerned. After all, he knows how dependent some German companies are on the Chinese market.
“It’s good and right that I’m here in Beijing today,” Olaf Scholz said afterwards in the direction of his critics at home in Germany. As if to prove this claim, the chancellor didn’t waste much time with pleasantries towards Li Keqiang. He also mentioned the five decades that diplomatic relations have been cultivated. But then Scholz criticized his counterpart surprisingly clearly. According to Scholz, he hopes that China will soon approve the mRNA vaccine from the German company Biontech – a broadside against China’s “zero Covid” policy and the Chinese leadership’s refusal to use more effective corona vaccines than the less effective ones out of national pride Vaccines made in China. Finally, Scholz was able to experience live on site what “zero Covid” means in practice.
Xi Jinping warns of nuclear escalation in Ukraine war
Scholz did not omit other contentious issues either. He said that “Taiwan’s status quo can only be changed peacefully and by mutual agreement,” pointing to human rights violations in Xinjiang. According to human rights activists, China is locking up hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs in re-education camps there. Addressing these grievances is “no interference in internal affairs,” said Scholz. A few days before his departure for Beijing, the chancellor had spoken to Chinese human rights lawyers via a secure video line.
Some observers perceived what Olaf Scholz was able to elicit from his Chinese interlocutors on the subject of the Ukraine war as surprising. “We cannot afford any further escalation,” said Chinese Premier Li when he appeared together with Scholz, after which the Chancellor reminded his counterpart that China “as a global political actor and a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council” has a special “responsibility for the have peace in the world”. According to the Chinese Foreign Ministry, the Russian war of aggression was also a topic in Scholz’s conversation with party leader Xi. The international community must “commonly oppose the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons,” Xi said, and “prevent the emergence of a nuclear crisis in Asia and Europe.”
They were words that Scholz was only too happy to take home with him, where his critics are already waiting for him. However, what the words of Xi and Li are worth remains to be seen. China has still not condemned Russia’s war against Ukraine, and it still maintains excellent relations with the Kremlin. The admonitions of a concerned guest from Germany are unlikely to change that.
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