BERLIN TRIES TO LIGHTEN ITS CHINESE DEPENDENCE. It will not be easy at all, given the exposure of its companies …
The German federal government is expected to adopt nine "guidelines" in international relations today to reduce its economic dependence on the People's Republic by "diversifying" relations, according to the foreign ministry which has developed this strategy together with the Chancellery and other departments. .
Moreover, at this moment world politics is conditioned by the hegemonic conflict between the rising China and the United States. Europe finds itself in the midst of this conflict and Germany in particular has often taken a very pro-Chinese stance, essentially for economic reasons. This is making Berlin more and more difficult, as it is dependent on Beijing, so much so that there is sometimes talk of a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin "Steel Axis". So the foreign ministry tries to rebalance with a new Indo-Pacific policy.
This change was evident from the words of the German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas at the meeting with his Chinese parigrade Wang Yi. While DI Maio did what he does best, scrapping himself to let others clean their shoes, Maas was strangely determined and said, "We won't allow ourselves to be the toy of a great power confrontation." This greatly cooled the meeting, which took place at Villa Borsig, on the outskirts of Berlin, and brought a couple of piqued responses from the Chinese minister: Wang Yi defined the spread of "unilateral information" and "prejudices" against China as irresponsible. co and has prohibited Europeans from interfering in Chinese "internal affairs".
What do the new German guidelines say? they are practically looking for the "Third Way", that is the decoupling between German foreign policy and that of both Chinese and American, with the creation of a network of alternative relations in the area and the growth of relations with Australia, South East Asia and India. This should be done with further free trade agreements with that area, but as this is a task for the EU; strongly conditioning their action. In the end, as always, Berlin talks and Brussels performs.
The problem is that German companies have invested a lot, perhaps too much, in China and are faced with a situation: VW has invested over 2 billion in 2020 in China by purchasing the electric car manufacturer JAC for 420 million, while 40 % of Daimler's profit is made in China. It will be very complicated for these companies to "disengage" from Beijing. Then the problem of Huawei and its participation in the new German digital network is still completely unsolved, because Berlin is niching on the related decisions.
In short, by dint of making fish in a barrel, Germany is likely to remain infiocinata.
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The BERLIN article TRIES TO LIGHTEN ITS CHINESE DEPENDENCE. It won't be easy at all, given the exposure of its companies… it comes from ScenariEconomici.it .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/berlino-prova-ad-alleggerire-la-sua-dipendenza-cinese-non-sara-per-nulla-facile-vista-lesposizione-delle-sue-aziende/ on Wed, 02 Sep 2020 08:34:13 +0000.