How and why Merkel’s Germany does business with China
Goals, challenges and scenarios for Merkel's Germany (not just China)
Eric Langenbacher – who also established himself as one of the most authoritative observers of the political evolution of contemporary Germany – in 2017 signed a volume entitled : Twilight of the Merkel Era: Power and Politics in Germany after the 2017 .
In the light of what has happened in these six months of European presidency and more generally of the brilliant test in the management of Covid-19, it is really a strange sunset that of the Chancellor: to bend the resistance of the ultra-penalty hawks in Holland, Finland and Austria, and at the same time of the Eurosceptics in Warsaw and Budapest to release the Recory funds, bring the Brexit agreement to fruition – in extremis – and finally collect a green light (pending the pronouncement of the European Parliament) of a strategic agreement with China – the Bilateral Investment Agreement (Bit) – which could represent one of the pillars of the post Trump world architecture.
Over the years, the rotating presidency had become accustomed to tired rituals and so much rhetoric, here we are facing a substantial change of pace.
All three goals bear the peculiar sign of Merkel 's personal negotiating strategy: negotiate, negotiate and negotiate, to the bitter end, until the dead line and beyond if necessary, up to the physical and psychological exhaustion of the counterpart, all in order to close the best deal possible. In particular, the Bit was closed at the 35th round of negotiations and after 7 years of negotiations (comparable with the last three of the Obama presidency and the four of Trump's: both with an anti-Chinese posture) and ended with concessions considered unthinkable on the part of Beijing, such as an update of the Chinese framework law on intellectual property, an expansion of the list of possible foreign investments, new parameters on compliance with international law of working conditions and environmental parameters.
In achieving these goals, however, the role of Paris (Macron spent himself personally) and Nicolas Chapuis (EU ambassador in Beijing) who personally followed the drafting – paragraph by paragraph – of the final document should also be emphasized.
The Italian sovereign world has underlined the risks, but some numbers should make us reflect in a less ideological way: Eurostat tells us that China is the first commercial partner of the EU with 447 billion in trade (with a positive balance for Brussels) and Confindustria indicates in the Chinese market one of the most interesting for the penetration of made in Italy (with an expected growth of 20 percent over the next 5 years).
Of course there is no shortage of shadows: the front of human rights and minorities remains an open nerve, but we will be able to assess whether the dialogue strategy will be more or less effective than confrontation. Who, unlike Langenbacher, had grasped the potential of this new Merkel season was certainly Claudio Landi, a highly experienced parliamentary journalist who in 2019 had published Frau Merkel. Queen of Europe (Passigli Editore; an updated edition is planned for spring).
In particular, the volume emphasizes the "multi-circle" geopolitical approach that is allowing Berlin to maintain positive relations not only in Europe but also in an increasingly interconnected and global world, from East to West.
Furthermore, Landi wanted to highlight how the Chancellor is inspired by the thought of Alfred Herrhausen, whose interesting life path the author traces, which ends tragically following an attack by the Rote Armee Fraktion.
Herrhausen in that November 1989 holds the position of President of the Deutsche Bank: Germany – recently reunited after the fall of the Berlin Wall – has Helmut Kohl as chancellor, who manages the complicated internal situation of two realities, the Rft and the Ddr , so dramatically socially and economically diverse.
Herrhausen is the custodian of a role that indicates him as a banker and great economic strategist among the most influential in Germany: he saw in the capitalist expansion towards the east the way to increase wealth throughout Europe, involving the countries that came out of Soviet influence , integrating them into a new global economic process. The bomb that explodes when the banker's car passes by interrupts the plan that Herrhausen was about to present to the world of world finance, but his thought remains imprinted among the new generations of politicians and economists, not least the theory that criticizes debt policies pursued by many large European banks, the cause of recession.
Strategies considered nefarious and negative for economies in crisis, hoping that the debt of countries would be canceled by seventy percent, interest reduced by fifty percent, moving the maturity of loans to thirty years: Herrhausen was convinced that nations in difficulty they needed resources and new development policies, certainly not fresh money to feed new debts.
Today the attention of the most astute analysts is on the next steps: the congress of the CDU (in January) and the German elections (in 2021) to understand how the void that Merkel will leave will be filled.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-e-perche-la-germania-di-merkel-fa-affari-con-la-cina/ on Sat, 09 Jan 2021 06:25:42 +0000.