China’s special envoy Zhai Jun is currently traveling the Middle East region. However, hopes for a successful mediation in the war between Israel and Hamas are slim. This is also partly due to China’s pro-Palestinian position. The renowned China expert Gedaliah Afterman of Reichman University in Herzliya sees relations between Israel and the People’s Republic severely damaged. “China is seen as much less of a partner,” says Afterman in an interview with Michael Radunski. “I think China misunderstood how significant this event is in the Israeli psyche. This is not another round with Hamas. This is our 9/11,” says Afterman.
The German government has repeatedly stressed the importance of more expertise on China in its strategy papers. Yet corresponding programs are not being created. On the contrary, the government and foundations cut money and staff. This means that China expertise tends to be lost instead, especially since even the once-so-committed private foundations have discontinued many programs, as Felix Lee analyzes.
On Friday, the same Felix Lee received an important award: the German Business Book Prize 2023. In his book “China, My Father and I,” our editor has written about China’s rise, but also about his family – and about the roots of the German car industry’s long-standing success as well as its current woes in the big market. Topics that you will also continue to find in China.Table by the very same author.
“Remain calm and stop violence” – sounds pretty much like a good mediator. Why is Israel disappointed about China’s reaction to the Hamas attack?
Many Israelis are truly disappointed that China did not denounce Hamas. I think China misunderstood how significant this event is in the Israeli psyche. This is not another round with Hamas. This is our 9/11. A few years ago, the Chinese called a terror attack on the train station in Kunming their 9/11. In that attack, about 30 people were killed. Here you have about 1100 civilians killed in Israel in a day. If you put that in a Chinese perspective, that would be around 150,000 people dead. But I am not so surprised about the Chinese response.
Why?
Put emotions and expectations aside, I think China’s reaction is not about Israel. When China looks at this situation, it first takes a regional perspective and in the end the perspective of a geopolitical superpower competition. Over the last few years, China has been using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to attack the United States. By attacking Israel, China is trying to discredit the US, and to embolden Arab and Muslim support for its own policies including in Xinjiang.
Last June, China’s President Xi Jinping offered to help promote peace talks with Israel. That doesn’t sound very egotistical, but is it realistic?
Indeed, China has become an important player in the Middle East. It successfully mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia surprising many – although China only joined in the last hundred meters of the marathon. But no other power could make it happen. However, to expect China will mediate peace between Israelis and Palestinians is unrealistic. In the case of Saudi Arabia and Iran both sides were already working on it, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we are unfortunately still far from it.
But the Chinese could help on specific issues, for example on humanitarian issues or on the hostages’ issue. That’s something where China can use its own network in the region and at the same time show that it has a positive role to play.
China may in fact be one of the few actors that could exert pressure on Iran. Tehran is one of Hamas’ main supporters. That could be an advantage. Alas, a parallel comes to mind here: In the Ukraine war, China could put Russia under pressure – but has not done so far.
The situation here is different to Russia-Ukraine. Here it is an opportunity for China to play a more positive and substantive role, even getting credit from the United States. China has a strategic opportunity to do something that will position itself well with all sides, although we know that traditionally it will not do much.
Speaking about parallels: China does not condemn the terror of Hamas, but it strongly condemns the terror by its Muslim minority Uyghurs. How do you assess these different behaviors?
Again, it’s about superpower competition. By not condemning Hamas explicitly, China wants to position itself within the Arab and Muslim world. From an Arab perspective, the Palestinians are freedom fighters. Hamas is not necessarily seen as a terrorist group. China is adopting this perspective because it is helpful in cementing its position in the Arab and Muslim world, and it needs their support in countering the US, including its criticism of its human rights record.
Isn’t that hypocrisy – the thing China always blames the US for?
Of course it is. We can talk at length about how China disappointed Israel. From an Israeli perspective, it is clear that China is hypocritical and has not shown Israel enough empathy. However, in Israel, we have a dramatic situation to deal with at the moment, we’re in the middle of a war. Having these discussions now isn’t productive.
Back to the relations between China and Israel. They seemed to be developing quite well recently. Was that a misperception?
In recent times in Israel, there have been talks about balancing the superpowers and diversifying foreign relations. Netanyahu was meant to go to Beijing this month – before Biden invited him to the White House. Now we will see a fundamental recalibration. There’s anger and disappointment. Biden took real action by sending the Ford strike group to the region, he even came to Israel. That demonstrated that the United States is on Israel’s side, whereas China has not even called the events a terrorist attack on Israel.
What will be the consequences?
We need a sharper understanding of what a relationship with China could look like. It was already becoming bumpier, but there would be more consequences when things calmed down. I think it’s clear that Israel will be much closer to the American position and China is seen as much less of a partner. One of the clear messages from Beijing was that Israel is not very important to China. For China, it seems that damage to the bilateral relationship with Israel has become collateral in China’s regional and geopolitical aspirations.
How does this affect China’s ambitions in the Middle East?
The strategic picture is changing quickly. In recent years, China built on the perception that the US is leaving the region and that it will not keep its promises. Now the US reasserted American presence in the region. That’s not only about Israel. I think the Americans will try to use the current momentum to push forward. For example, Saudi Arabia is negotiating security guarantees with the US and will think: That’s exactly what I need.
And China?
China is at a critical junction. It will still be a relevant player when it comes to infrastructure, energy and technology. But if Beijing doesn’t do anything politically, then people will say: All the excitement that we had about China becoming a more serious player is less relevant. Then China might pursue its economic interests, but the real player will be the United States.
They said the US response is not just about Israel.
Yes, this is a geopolitical move. It is also a strong signal for Russia in the Ukraine and even more for China concerning Taiwan. China has been quite effective in filling the perceived US vacuum over the last ten and five years. But if the Americans are effective in conveying the message that US alliances still count and that Washington is willing to guarantee the security of its partners, I think that will be a pretty effective pushback to the Chinese. On the other hand, if the situation gets out of hand the impact will be felt not only in the region but globally.
Gedaliah Afterman is Head of the Asia Policy Program at Reichman University’s Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy & Foreign Relations, Herzliya.
The German government coalition explicitly included strengthening of China competence in its coalition agreement. “We want to significantly expand our expertise in Asia and China,” it says on page 24. The government’s China strategy, which it presented to the public in July, even dedicates an entire chapter to “Coordinating policy and building expertise on China.” Due to China’s growing importance, the need for people with the corresponding expertise is growing, it reads.
In reality, the opposite seems to be the case: More and more China programs are losing their funding or are even being cut entirely. Although the Federal Foreign Office states that it continues to support projects like the “German Network for Education about China,” the private-state cooperation in the network is currently being scaled back.
The “German Network for Education about China” is a joint initiative of the private Mercator Foundation and the Goethe-Instituts, which are subordinate to the German Federal Foreign Office. The goal of the network is to expand the teaching of China skills at German schools. The network also supports exchange programs. Since 2014, “almost 2,000 young Germans and Chinese have met” through the school partnership fund, which is also supported by the Goethe-Institut in Beijing.
However, these school partnership funds expire in 2024. The network states on its website, “as of now, no new applications for funding of school exchange encounters can be submitted.” The network simply points out that the Mercator Foundation, which provides the funding, is “realigning itself in view of foreign policy challenges and Europe’s role in the world.” There is no replacement in sight, meaning that there will be no more Sino-German school exchange programs for the time being.
At the very least, the current realignment does not affect Goethe-Institut branches in China. The Federal Foreign Office operates the Goethe-Instituts worldwide, with German courses and cultural education. During the new orientation, it plans to close some locations, for example, in France.
Something that gives hope: In the area of research, the Federal Government intends to expand so-called regional China competence more strongly. “Regio-China” was launched in mid-2021. This funding program aims to help stakeholders in Germany who have accumulated a great deal of China expertise in recent years to deepen their knowledge more through exchange with each other and to establish new formats. “Where knowledge and experience have been lacking up to now, they are to be built up jointly,” says the German funding description.
However, the manager training program run by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is on the slash list. The program is a foreign trade promotion instrument that primarily assists small and medium-sized German enterprises in opening up foreign markets. A ministry spokesperson confirmed that this program, too, “will be relaunched in the course of the realignment of all foreign trade promotion instruments.” In the future, the focus will be on market development with the aim of diversification and resilience: “For the target country China, the program has been discontinued.”
The Federal Foreign Office refers to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, which is supposed to pool the China programs in the future. The ministry affirms that research cooperation with Chinese institutions will certainly be pursued in the future. At the same time, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research wants to discontinue support for cooperation “with special dual-use risks or for cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence that could possibly be misused for surveillance purposes and human rights violations.”
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has not yet canceled any China-related project funding or scholarships. However, due to China’s past restrictive Covid policy, the number of scholarships awarded to China has declined significantly in the past few years.
In 2018, before the pandemic, the DAAD was still funding around 3,200 scholarships and projects. In 2022, it was only 1,800. “However, this concerns the implementation and not the fundamental offer,” says the DAAD. Now that China has also lifted its Covid restriction, there is a slight recovery, the DAAD says. “The interest of German universities in cooperations with China remains high,” said DAAD spokesperson Michael Flacke.
According to the DAAD, however, there is “increased uncertainty” among universities about China. For this reason, the Competence Centre for International Academic Cooperation (KIWi) is being expanded with funds from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The German education ministry supports the center’s expansion with an additional one million euros annually.
What worries the DAAD is the drastic number of German students in China in the wake of the pandemic. In 2019, the Chinese Ministry of Education still counted 8,108 students from Germany; by the end of 2022, the DAAD Beijing Office was only aware of a few handfuls of German students in China. “Although teaching could often be maintained with online courses, the stay in the host country is the heart of every student exchange,” says DAAD spokesperson Flacke. Since August 2022, applying for visas for a long-term study stay in China is again possible. But flight tickets are still very expensive. At least the DAAD has noticed an increase in the number of students interested in China this year.
The cuts by private foundations in their engagement with China are particularly drastic. Robert Bosch Foundation, Bertelsmann Foundation, Koerber Foundation, Mercator Foundation – they all had extensive China programs in the 2010s. The Bosch Foundation was particularly active with special exchange programs for journalists, teachers and lawyers. “We have phased out all of our regional projects since the strategy process ended in 2019,” the Bosch Foundation said upon inquiry.
The Foundation had initially supported a Chinese NGO in the area of climate change. But this support has also ended. Currently, the Bosch Foundation supports programs by topic (peace, democracy, immigration society, migration, climate change and inequality) but no longer by region.
The Mercator Foundation, which, among other things, significantly funds the renowned Mercator Institute for China Studies, has promised to take over a large part of the funding for another five years starting in 2024. However, the financing of the, albeit only three times run, highly successful scholarship program for 25 students and trainees in the so-called MINT subjects, i.e., mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology, will be discontinued. The voluntary association Bildungsbruecke China-Deutschland e.V. (Educational Bridge China-Germany) developed the program. On 3 November, a conference will be held in Dusseldorf to mark the provisional conclusion of this program on the question: Ways to increase China’s competence in the MINT sector. The results of this conference will be passed on to politicians as policy recommendations.
And the Bertelsmann Foundation, too, has significantly scaled back its China program. All of the foundation’s China and Asia-related activities were incorporated into the program “Sovereign Europe: Strategic Management of Global Interdependence” in 2021. A dedicated Asia program no longer exists. Whereas there was previously a staff of five explicitly working on Asia, two of them on China, only one person is now responsible for the entire region.
Indre Bermann from the Bildungsbruecke China-Deutschland and initiator of the MINT program has the impression that the trend returns to learning more about China, than with China. The “people-to-people approach” is being lost in the process. “I think that is very regrettable.”
The brutal images from China were difficult to comprehend for 17-year-old Bjorn Alpermann. In the summer of 1989, he watched on TV how the Beijing government crushed peaceful student protests in Tiananmen Square. In this politically highly charged period, marked by the struggle for democracy – in Eastern Europe as well as in China – young Bjorn Alpermann discovered his interest in a country where this struggle failed.
A political ice age developed between the West and China after the events of June 1989. Sinology students found it almost impossible to travel to the country, and the number of new students was low. Nevertheless, Alpermann decided in 1991 to study Chinese regional studies in Cologne, focusing on politics and economics – without ever having been to China.
It was only three years later, in 1994, that he went to university in Tianjin for a year. His enthusiasm was somewhat limited at first: Campus life was a bubble that was difficult to break out of. It wasn’t until his second stay in China and an internship in a Chinese state-owned enterprise that something clicked: Through conversations with his Chinese colleagues, Alpermann discovered utterly different worlds of life.
This second stay was the initial spark, as he personally describes it. He found that there were many different Chinas to discover. Among them was Xinjiang, which he got to know during a trip. He was captivated by the culturally different world in the same country. Even though he wasn’t planning to focus on this region at the time.
After graduating in 1998, Alpermann first worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne. His PhD followed in 2006 and, after a six-month stay at UC Berkeley in California, a junior professorship in Wurzburg. Since 2013, Alpermann has held the chair for Contemporary Chinese Studies there. His lectures include student protests and the democracy movement, Chinese political culture, and social change and modernization.
His research is currently divided roughly 50/50 into two areas, Alpermann says. One focus is on “worldmaking” in China, which is a project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research that looks at the political and social impact of globalization on China’s cities. It’s about urban change, which influences social structures and community building.
The second focus of his work is Xinjiang. When reports of mass detentions in the northwestern province emerged in 2017 and 2018, they sounded so drastic to Alpermann that he began to study the region in depth. He planned to offer a lecture on Xinjiang; his extensive research for the lecture script became the basis for his book “Xinjiang: China and the Uyghurs,” published in 2021.
It is a book that also attracted research colleagues’ attention. Rune Steenberg, a Danish anthropologist specializing in Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, invited Alpermann to collaborate on the EU-funded research project “Remote Ethnography of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” In this way, his engagement with the topic grew deeper.
Remote Ethnography is the attempt to obtain the most objective information possible about a region that is more tightly controlled than almost any other in the world. Not only is it difficult for researchers and journalists to travel and move freely in Xinjiang – the research also poses a moral problem. It could put Uyghurs in danger if they were to provide information about their situation.
The researchers around Steenberg, who, besides Alpermann, also include Vanessa Frangville, want to strengthen Xinjiang research in Europe despite these circumstances. Their goal is to develop the best possible methodology and strengthen Xinjiang researchers through education to develop further expertise in Europe – independent of the USA and Australia, which have been leading research hubs so far.
But how to conduct research when traveling to the region is not possible? Discourse and document analyses are possible, but the researchers also work with Chinese and Uyghur social media, which in part convey unfiltered impressions. In addition, there is the evaluation of satellite images. Eyewitness reports are also an option, but not in Xinjiang itself. Instead, the researchers conduct interviews with the diaspora. Steenberg also travels a lot throughout Central Asia, where he meets people who come from the region.
Bjorn Alpermann says it is important not only to interview refugees, because these people usually feel the most oppressed. This could result in a distorted picture. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Steenberg meets people who want to go back and have something to lose. Their testimonies are particularly valuable. The researchers bring all these different sources together, a methodology that, in addition to the research itself, is intended to be a result of their work.
Xinjiang is a heated issue with high political relevance, to which German Chinese academia absolutely must dedicate itself, says Alpermann – despite all the difficulties that the disputes mean for researchers. He is actively involved in the debate about research on the topic.
As well as in the debate about China expertise in general. To Alpermann, it is clear that Germany needs to position itself in this area better. Not enough chairs deal with China, and many of his colleagues focus primarily on politics. Economics and sociology, on the other hand, are underrepresented in China research, something he believes needs to be strengthened.
Alpermann himself wishes he had more hours in the day; perhaps then he could devote even more time to the topic of aging and elderly care in China. Yet another, completely different topic, but it corresponds to Alpermann’s guiding principle: China is complex, exciting, and very relevant. Julia Fiedler
A picture perfect as a screensaver: On Sunday, the Asia Para Games kicked off in Hangzhou with the opening ceremony. Host country China is competing with more than 400 male and female athletes. The Para Games last until October 28.
China’s special envoy Zhai Jun is currently traveling the Middle East region. However, hopes for a successful mediation in the war between Israel and Hamas are slim. This is also partly due to China’s pro-Palestinian position. The renowned China expert Gedaliah Afterman of Reichman University in Herzliya sees relations between Israel and the People’s Republic severely damaged. “China is seen as much less of a partner,” says Afterman in an interview with Michael Radunski. “I think China misunderstood how significant this event is in the Israeli psyche. This is not another round with Hamas. This is our 9/11,” says Afterman.
The German government has repeatedly stressed the importance of more expertise on China in its strategy papers. Yet corresponding programs are not being created. On the contrary, the government and foundations cut money and staff. This means that China expertise tends to be lost instead, especially since even the once-so-committed private foundations have discontinued many programs, as Felix Lee analyzes.
On Friday, the same Felix Lee received an important award: the German Business Book Prize 2023. In his book “China, My Father and I,” our editor has written about China’s rise, but also about his family – and about the roots of the German car industry’s long-standing success as well as its current woes in the big market. Topics that you will also continue to find in China.Table by the very same author.
“Remain calm and stop violence” – sounds pretty much like a good mediator. Why is Israel disappointed about China’s reaction to the Hamas attack?
Many Israelis are truly disappointed that China did not denounce Hamas. I think China misunderstood how significant this event is in the Israeli psyche. This is not another round with Hamas. This is our 9/11. A few years ago, the Chinese called a terror attack on the train station in Kunming their 9/11. In that attack, about 30 people were killed. Here you have about 1100 civilians killed in Israel in a day. If you put that in a Chinese perspective, that would be around 150,000 people dead. But I am not so surprised about the Chinese response.
Why?
Put emotions and expectations aside, I think China’s reaction is not about Israel. When China looks at this situation, it first takes a regional perspective and in the end the perspective of a geopolitical superpower competition. Over the last few years, China has been using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to attack the United States. By attacking Israel, China is trying to discredit the US, and to embolden Arab and Muslim support for its own policies including in Xinjiang.
Last June, China’s President Xi Jinping offered to help promote peace talks with Israel. That doesn’t sound very egotistical, but is it realistic?
Indeed, China has become an important player in the Middle East. It successfully mediated between Iran and Saudi Arabia surprising many – although China only joined in the last hundred meters of the marathon. But no other power could make it happen. However, to expect China will mediate peace between Israelis and Palestinians is unrealistic. In the case of Saudi Arabia and Iran both sides were already working on it, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict we are unfortunately still far from it.
But the Chinese could help on specific issues, for example on humanitarian issues or on the hostages’ issue. That’s something where China can use its own network in the region and at the same time show that it has a positive role to play.
China may in fact be one of the few actors that could exert pressure on Iran. Tehran is one of Hamas’ main supporters. That could be an advantage. Alas, a parallel comes to mind here: In the Ukraine war, China could put Russia under pressure – but has not done so far.
The situation here is different to Russia-Ukraine. Here it is an opportunity for China to play a more positive and substantive role, even getting credit from the United States. China has a strategic opportunity to do something that will position itself well with all sides, although we know that traditionally it will not do much.
Speaking about parallels: China does not condemn the terror of Hamas, but it strongly condemns the terror by its Muslim minority Uyghurs. How do you assess these different behaviors?
Again, it’s about superpower competition. By not condemning Hamas explicitly, China wants to position itself within the Arab and Muslim world. From an Arab perspective, the Palestinians are freedom fighters. Hamas is not necessarily seen as a terrorist group. China is adopting this perspective because it is helpful in cementing its position in the Arab and Muslim world, and it needs their support in countering the US, including its criticism of its human rights record.
Isn’t that hypocrisy – the thing China always blames the US for?
Of course it is. We can talk at length about how China disappointed Israel. From an Israeli perspective, it is clear that China is hypocritical and has not shown Israel enough empathy. However, in Israel, we have a dramatic situation to deal with at the moment, we’re in the middle of a war. Having these discussions now isn’t productive.
Back to the relations between China and Israel. They seemed to be developing quite well recently. Was that a misperception?
In recent times in Israel, there have been talks about balancing the superpowers and diversifying foreign relations. Netanyahu was meant to go to Beijing this month – before Biden invited him to the White House. Now we will see a fundamental recalibration. There’s anger and disappointment. Biden took real action by sending the Ford strike group to the region, he even came to Israel. That demonstrated that the United States is on Israel’s side, whereas China has not even called the events a terrorist attack on Israel.
What will be the consequences?
We need a sharper understanding of what a relationship with China could look like. It was already becoming bumpier, but there would be more consequences when things calmed down. I think it’s clear that Israel will be much closer to the American position and China is seen as much less of a partner. One of the clear messages from Beijing was that Israel is not very important to China. For China, it seems that damage to the bilateral relationship with Israel has become collateral in China’s regional and geopolitical aspirations.
How does this affect China’s ambitions in the Middle East?
The strategic picture is changing quickly. In recent years, China built on the perception that the US is leaving the region and that it will not keep its promises. Now the US reasserted American presence in the region. That’s not only about Israel. I think the Americans will try to use the current momentum to push forward. For example, Saudi Arabia is negotiating security guarantees with the US and will think: That’s exactly what I need.
And China?
China is at a critical junction. It will still be a relevant player when it comes to infrastructure, energy and technology. But if Beijing doesn’t do anything politically, then people will say: All the excitement that we had about China becoming a more serious player is less relevant. Then China might pursue its economic interests, but the real player will be the United States.
They said the US response is not just about Israel.
Yes, this is a geopolitical move. It is also a strong signal for Russia in the Ukraine and even more for China concerning Taiwan. China has been quite effective in filling the perceived US vacuum over the last ten and five years. But if the Americans are effective in conveying the message that US alliances still count and that Washington is willing to guarantee the security of its partners, I think that will be a pretty effective pushback to the Chinese. On the other hand, if the situation gets out of hand the impact will be felt not only in the region but globally.
Gedaliah Afterman is Head of the Asia Policy Program at Reichman University’s Abba Eban Institute for Diplomacy & Foreign Relations, Herzliya.
The German government coalition explicitly included strengthening of China competence in its coalition agreement. “We want to significantly expand our expertise in Asia and China,” it says on page 24. The government’s China strategy, which it presented to the public in July, even dedicates an entire chapter to “Coordinating policy and building expertise on China.” Due to China’s growing importance, the need for people with the corresponding expertise is growing, it reads.
In reality, the opposite seems to be the case: More and more China programs are losing their funding or are even being cut entirely. Although the Federal Foreign Office states that it continues to support projects like the “German Network for Education about China,” the private-state cooperation in the network is currently being scaled back.
The “German Network for Education about China” is a joint initiative of the private Mercator Foundation and the Goethe-Instituts, which are subordinate to the German Federal Foreign Office. The goal of the network is to expand the teaching of China skills at German schools. The network also supports exchange programs. Since 2014, “almost 2,000 young Germans and Chinese have met” through the school partnership fund, which is also supported by the Goethe-Institut in Beijing.
However, these school partnership funds expire in 2024. The network states on its website, “as of now, no new applications for funding of school exchange encounters can be submitted.” The network simply points out that the Mercator Foundation, which provides the funding, is “realigning itself in view of foreign policy challenges and Europe’s role in the world.” There is no replacement in sight, meaning that there will be no more Sino-German school exchange programs for the time being.
At the very least, the current realignment does not affect Goethe-Institut branches in China. The Federal Foreign Office operates the Goethe-Instituts worldwide, with German courses and cultural education. During the new orientation, it plans to close some locations, for example, in France.
Something that gives hope: In the area of research, the Federal Government intends to expand so-called regional China competence more strongly. “Regio-China” was launched in mid-2021. This funding program aims to help stakeholders in Germany who have accumulated a great deal of China expertise in recent years to deepen their knowledge more through exchange with each other and to establish new formats. “Where knowledge and experience have been lacking up to now, they are to be built up jointly,” says the German funding description.
However, the manager training program run by the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is on the slash list. The program is a foreign trade promotion instrument that primarily assists small and medium-sized German enterprises in opening up foreign markets. A ministry spokesperson confirmed that this program, too, “will be relaunched in the course of the realignment of all foreign trade promotion instruments.” In the future, the focus will be on market development with the aim of diversification and resilience: “For the target country China, the program has been discontinued.”
The Federal Foreign Office refers to the Federal Ministry of Education and Research, which is supposed to pool the China programs in the future. The ministry affirms that research cooperation with Chinese institutions will certainly be pursued in the future. At the same time, the Federal Ministry of Education and Research wants to discontinue support for cooperation “with special dual-use risks or for cooperation in the field of artificial intelligence that could possibly be misused for surveillance purposes and human rights violations.”
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) has not yet canceled any China-related project funding or scholarships. However, due to China’s past restrictive Covid policy, the number of scholarships awarded to China has declined significantly in the past few years.
In 2018, before the pandemic, the DAAD was still funding around 3,200 scholarships and projects. In 2022, it was only 1,800. “However, this concerns the implementation and not the fundamental offer,” says the DAAD. Now that China has also lifted its Covid restriction, there is a slight recovery, the DAAD says. “The interest of German universities in cooperations with China remains high,” said DAAD spokesperson Michael Flacke.
According to the DAAD, however, there is “increased uncertainty” among universities about China. For this reason, the Competence Centre for International Academic Cooperation (KIWi) is being expanded with funds from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The German education ministry supports the center’s expansion with an additional one million euros annually.
What worries the DAAD is the drastic number of German students in China in the wake of the pandemic. In 2019, the Chinese Ministry of Education still counted 8,108 students from Germany; by the end of 2022, the DAAD Beijing Office was only aware of a few handfuls of German students in China. “Although teaching could often be maintained with online courses, the stay in the host country is the heart of every student exchange,” says DAAD spokesperson Flacke. Since August 2022, applying for visas for a long-term study stay in China is again possible. But flight tickets are still very expensive. At least the DAAD has noticed an increase in the number of students interested in China this year.
The cuts by private foundations in their engagement with China are particularly drastic. Robert Bosch Foundation, Bertelsmann Foundation, Koerber Foundation, Mercator Foundation – they all had extensive China programs in the 2010s. The Bosch Foundation was particularly active with special exchange programs for journalists, teachers and lawyers. “We have phased out all of our regional projects since the strategy process ended in 2019,” the Bosch Foundation said upon inquiry.
The Foundation had initially supported a Chinese NGO in the area of climate change. But this support has also ended. Currently, the Bosch Foundation supports programs by topic (peace, democracy, immigration society, migration, climate change and inequality) but no longer by region.
The Mercator Foundation, which, among other things, significantly funds the renowned Mercator Institute for China Studies, has promised to take over a large part of the funding for another five years starting in 2024. However, the financing of the, albeit only three times run, highly successful scholarship program for 25 students and trainees in the so-called MINT subjects, i.e., mathematics, information technology, natural sciences and technology, will be discontinued. The voluntary association Bildungsbruecke China-Deutschland e.V. (Educational Bridge China-Germany) developed the program. On 3 November, a conference will be held in Dusseldorf to mark the provisional conclusion of this program on the question: Ways to increase China’s competence in the MINT sector. The results of this conference will be passed on to politicians as policy recommendations.
And the Bertelsmann Foundation, too, has significantly scaled back its China program. All of the foundation’s China and Asia-related activities were incorporated into the program “Sovereign Europe: Strategic Management of Global Interdependence” in 2021. A dedicated Asia program no longer exists. Whereas there was previously a staff of five explicitly working on Asia, two of them on China, only one person is now responsible for the entire region.
Indre Bermann from the Bildungsbruecke China-Deutschland and initiator of the MINT program has the impression that the trend returns to learning more about China, than with China. The “people-to-people approach” is being lost in the process. “I think that is very regrettable.”
The brutal images from China were difficult to comprehend for 17-year-old Bjorn Alpermann. In the summer of 1989, he watched on TV how the Beijing government crushed peaceful student protests in Tiananmen Square. In this politically highly charged period, marked by the struggle for democracy – in Eastern Europe as well as in China – young Bjorn Alpermann discovered his interest in a country where this struggle failed.
A political ice age developed between the West and China after the events of June 1989. Sinology students found it almost impossible to travel to the country, and the number of new students was low. Nevertheless, Alpermann decided in 1991 to study Chinese regional studies in Cologne, focusing on politics and economics – without ever having been to China.
It was only three years later, in 1994, that he went to university in Tianjin for a year. His enthusiasm was somewhat limited at first: Campus life was a bubble that was difficult to break out of. It wasn’t until his second stay in China and an internship in a Chinese state-owned enterprise that something clicked: Through conversations with his Chinese colleagues, Alpermann discovered utterly different worlds of life.
This second stay was the initial spark, as he personally describes it. He found that there were many different Chinas to discover. Among them was Xinjiang, which he got to know during a trip. He was captivated by the culturally different world in the same country. Even though he wasn’t planning to focus on this region at the time.
After graduating in 1998, Alpermann first worked as a research assistant at the University of Cologne. His PhD followed in 2006 and, after a six-month stay at UC Berkeley in California, a junior professorship in Wurzburg. Since 2013, Alpermann has held the chair for Contemporary Chinese Studies there. His lectures include student protests and the democracy movement, Chinese political culture, and social change and modernization.
His research is currently divided roughly 50/50 into two areas, Alpermann says. One focus is on “worldmaking” in China, which is a project of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research that looks at the political and social impact of globalization on China’s cities. It’s about urban change, which influences social structures and community building.
The second focus of his work is Xinjiang. When reports of mass detentions in the northwestern province emerged in 2017 and 2018, they sounded so drastic to Alpermann that he began to study the region in depth. He planned to offer a lecture on Xinjiang; his extensive research for the lecture script became the basis for his book “Xinjiang: China and the Uyghurs,” published in 2021.
It is a book that also attracted research colleagues’ attention. Rune Steenberg, a Danish anthropologist specializing in Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, invited Alpermann to collaborate on the EU-funded research project “Remote Ethnography of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region.” In this way, his engagement with the topic grew deeper.
Remote Ethnography is the attempt to obtain the most objective information possible about a region that is more tightly controlled than almost any other in the world. Not only is it difficult for researchers and journalists to travel and move freely in Xinjiang – the research also poses a moral problem. It could put Uyghurs in danger if they were to provide information about their situation.
The researchers around Steenberg, who, besides Alpermann, also include Vanessa Frangville, want to strengthen Xinjiang research in Europe despite these circumstances. Their goal is to develop the best possible methodology and strengthen Xinjiang researchers through education to develop further expertise in Europe – independent of the USA and Australia, which have been leading research hubs so far.
But how to conduct research when traveling to the region is not possible? Discourse and document analyses are possible, but the researchers also work with Chinese and Uyghur social media, which in part convey unfiltered impressions. In addition, there is the evaluation of satellite images. Eyewitness reports are also an option, but not in Xinjiang itself. Instead, the researchers conduct interviews with the diaspora. Steenberg also travels a lot throughout Central Asia, where he meets people who come from the region.
Bjorn Alpermann says it is important not only to interview refugees, because these people usually feel the most oppressed. This could result in a distorted picture. In Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, Steenberg meets people who want to go back and have something to lose. Their testimonies are particularly valuable. The researchers bring all these different sources together, a methodology that, in addition to the research itself, is intended to be a result of their work.
Xinjiang is a heated issue with high political relevance, to which German Chinese academia absolutely must dedicate itself, says Alpermann – despite all the difficulties that the disputes mean for researchers. He is actively involved in the debate about research on the topic.
As well as in the debate about China expertise in general. To Alpermann, it is clear that Germany needs to position itself in this area better. Not enough chairs deal with China, and many of his colleagues focus primarily on politics. Economics and sociology, on the other hand, are underrepresented in China research, something he believes needs to be strengthened.
Alpermann himself wishes he had more hours in the day; perhaps then he could devote even more time to the topic of aging and elderly care in China. Yet another, completely different topic, but it corresponds to Alpermann’s guiding principle: China is complex, exciting, and very relevant. Julia Fiedler
A picture perfect as a screensaver: On Sunday, the Asia Para Games kicked off in Hangzhou with the opening ceremony. Host country China is competing with more than 400 male and female athletes. The Para Games last until October 28.
