Newsletter 2013/05/24 – Germany’s New Role
BERLIN/BEIJING (Own report) – In the prelude to this weekend’s new
Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang’s visit to Germany, a prominent
German think tank is pleading for closer German-Chinese cooperation.
If Germany seeks to continue to have influence in Beijing, it must
“put more weight in the balance than it has in the past,” warns a
recent statement by the Bertelsmann Foundation. Otherwise Berlin risks
suffering the same fate as the EU, which China is marginalizing to a
growing degree – not least of all, because of the persisting crisis.
The EU’s institutions have – “as has often been the case in foreign
policy – also overestimated their roles with China.” The German
Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP) sees the
development of European-Chinese relations similarly. According to SWP,
Germany has become the focus of China’s attention on Europe, while the
EU “has been demoted to a ‘political dwarf’ in the course of the
crisis.” Foreign policy specialists outside Germany had critically
noted last year that there is a disparity between Germany’s China
policy and that of other EU countries – wherein Berlin has been having
growing success in Beijing. “Europe,” in comparison, is being
marginalized.
more