- Talks in times of sanctions
- Springboard international schools
- Meituan plans to replace staff with delivery robots
- EU cracks down on Chinese subsidies
- Census shows population decline
- Construction begins on new VW plant in Anhui
- Autonomous driving: Continental to cooperate with Horizon Robotics
- Automotive chips: TSMC plans billion-euro investment in China
- Profile: Christian Ude
German-Chinese government consultations start today. Critics complain that they have often been a PR success for Beijing in the past. Foreign policy experts from the coalition and the opposition are calling on the German government to address critical questions about human rights, sanctions, and the CAI investment agreement, as Finn Mayer-Kuckuk analyses. It would be a step forward. After all, just two weeks ago Angela Merkel spoke to Xi Jinping on the phone and hardly addressed any critical issues.
Frank Sieren took a closer look at one branch of the Chinese education system: international schools. For wealthy Chinese, they are seen as a cornerstone for their children’s successful careers. This is because the labor market often competes based on certificates rather than skills.
Delivery men are often at the other end of the “social ladder”. In China, the market for food delivery is booming. Jörn Petring and Gregor Koppenburg looked at the plans of market leader Meituan to replace employees with autonomous delivery robots. If the new technology catches on, it could put hundreds of thousands of people out of work who have fewer and fewer opportunities in China’s increasingly competitive labor market.
There were also some new developments in the automotive sector. Volkswagen has started construction of a new EV factory in Hefei. The supplier Continental is setting up a joint venture in the field of autonomous driving. And chip giant TSMC is looking to expand the production of semiconductors for the auto industry. Read more in the News.
Nico Beckert
Feature
Talks in times of sanctions
Today, Premier Li Keqiang, Chancellor Angela Merkel, and most of the ministers of their respective governments will be connected for video talks. This summit is called the “Sino-German Government Consultations” and is taking place for the sixth time. Merkel, as an experienced head of government, has been able to watch China grow in self-confidence in real-time over the course of the format since 2011. Back then, her counterparts still explicitly rejected great power ambitions; today, their successors are stepping up with the claim to determine world affairs.
Today’s China, however, is not only broadcast-conscious and at times really biting – it is also more hypocritical, according to the opposition. “China has many faces – a diplomatic one for us Europeans and an inward one,” Bijan Djir-Sarai, a member of the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee for the FDP, said Tuesday at an event hosted by the Merics research institute. While China promises transparent rules for investments on the one hand, in practice it makes market access more difficult.
However, the German government is generally optimistic that the consultations will deliver something to the bottom line. “We appreciate the opportunity such a format gives to make progress on issues that are important to both sides,” said government spokesman Steffen Seibert. Specifically, he mentioned climate protection, economic issues, and COVID-19 as possible topics of discussion. Germany’s stance on civil and human rights was “well known,” he said. There were “completely different social systems sitting together at the table here.”
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