Biden’s Asia visit + Human Rights Award

Joe Biden will soon embark on his first visit to Asia as US president. His first stops will be his close allies Japan and South Korea. Yesterday, he already welcomed the heads of state and government of the ASEAN group at a special summit in Washington. China’s leaders will be keeping a keen eye on all this. After all, China and the US are vying for influence in Asia and especially in the Indo-Pacific. The People’s Republic has made advances in the region in recent years with its Silk Road. China takes a less friendly approach in the South China Sea. Washington has already made the region a focal point of its foreign policy under Barack Obama. What can Biden offer its nations to grow closer to the US? Christiane Kuehl has the answers.

The awarding of the International Human Rights Award of the German city of Nuremberg is also fraught with conflict. After it was announced that the prize was to go to a Chinese woman who witnessed human rights violations in Xinjiang, there were protests from China, as was to be expected. A city partnership suffered as a result. There were threats that Nuremberg companies would face economic repercussions for the awarding. But fortunately, the organizers did not give in to intimidation. Sayragul Sauytbay, who was one of the first to draw attention to torture, imprisonment and the oppression of the Uyghurs, will receive the Human Rights Award on Sunday.

China’s companies have caught up massively in recent decades. In many areas, they are now on par with their Western competitors, even surpassing them in some others. Thirty or forty years ago, this was almost unimaginable. But what is often overlooked is that it was German experts who helped build China’s industry, as Johnny Erling reveals in today’s column. At times, the Germans were revered as heroes – Werner Gerich, for example. A monument was even built in his honor in Wuhan. For two years, he headed an engine factory in the city. Reform politicians followed his every word when he criticized the lax production processes. At the time, industrial experts were not dispatched out of pure altruism. Rather, they wanted to develop new export markets for German industrial goods. Were they sometimes too naive and strengthened a future competitor and systemic rival?

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Nico Beckert