Wang Yi in Moscow + Much ado about CATL

China’s powerful foreign policy emissary, Wang Yi, was supposed to meet Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during his flying visit to Moscow. But then Vladimir Putin received him in person at the Kremlin. The Chinese leadership may not have expected this meeting either.

For Putin, the meeting was a clever move: Shortly before the anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the war czar can once again show off the solidarity between Beijing and Moscow, as Christiane Kuehl explains. Meanwhile, it is unknown whether the two also discussed the peace plan for Ukraine put forward by Wang.

At the beginning of January, a report by MDR about the Chinese battery manufacturer CATL caused a stir. The police had carried out a “raid” on the construction site of the CATL plant in Thuringia, it said. The public broadcaster reported of “illegal residence”, “forged entry documents” and “undercover investigations”.

The result: With its choice of words, MDR caused much ado about nothing. It was a matter of routine checks, as the responsible main customs office confirmed to our author Christian Domke Seidel, and there were no undercover investigations or anything of the sort. And the fact that Chinese employees had fled from the officials during previous checks, as reported by MDR, is also unknown to customs. The MDR journalists did not seem to like the fact that the CATL plant mainly employs highly qualified specialists from China who bring high-tech to central Germany.

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Felix Lee