Chinese influence on public opinion in other countries via Facebook, TikTok, or X is nothing new – it even has a name: Spamouflage. Facebook calls it the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.” But anyone who would have expected the manipulative sources to favor a side in Tuesday’s US elections is mistaken.
Spamouflage does not explicitly endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, the strategy aims to drive political debates in the country to extremes and divide American society ever deeper. The lack of partisanship may not be a coincidence, but an expression of Chinese uncertainty as to what might be the better choice from Beijing’s perspective.
On the surface, this seems to be Donald Trump, who is said to take comparatively little interest in the world beyond the United States and would leave the field to China. Some say he is damaging democracy, which could play into China’s hands as an ambitious counter-model. However, not everyone shares this opinion. Jörn Petring has summarized how the People’s Republic views the two candidates and what their respective election win would mean.
Meanwhile, Tim Gabel spoke to Patrick Cramer, President of the Max Planck Society (MPG), for us and asked him about the gathering to mark the 50th anniversary of science-diplomacy relations with the Chinese National Academy of Sciences. According to Cramer, the geopolitical situation is causing problems because there is a great deal of mistrust in the USA and Europe.
He recommends maintaining friendship and transatlantic cooperation with the USA, regardless of the election outcome. However, he also stressed the need for cooperation with other countries, such as China. “We must take the associated risks seriously, take measures to contain them, and know which collaborations we can enter without risk.”
China vehemently opposes accusations of interfering in the US election campaign. But the network analysts at Graphika paint a different picture. The company is studying the origins of highly opinionated and controversial comments on social media. A few weeks ago, Graphika published a report that identified the Chinese state as the driver of a campaign that “has become more aggressive in its efforts to influence US political conversations ahead of the 2024 presidential election.”
Chinese interference in shaping opinions in other countries via Facebook, TikTok, or X is not new; it even has a name: Spamouflage. Facebook calls it the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.” But anyone who would have expected the manipulative sources to favor a political orientation is mistaken. Spamouflage does not explicitly endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, the strategy aims more to drive political debates in the country to extremes and cause even wider rifts in American society.
The lack of partisanship may not be a coincidence, but an expression of Chinese uncertainty about the better choice from Beijing’s perspective. On the surface, it seems to be Donald Trump, who is said to take comparatively little interest in the world outside the US and leave the field to China. Some say he is damaging democracy, which could play into China’s hands as an ambitious counter-model.
But by no means everyone shares this opinion. In an article for the Lowy Institute, Richard McGregor writes that the perception of Trump in China is associated with a great deal of skepticism, as he is considered unpredictable. China already experienced this during his first term. During the 2016 election campaign, China was one of Trump’s core issues. He portrayed Beijing as an economic rival and threat. Once in office, he sparked a tariff and trade war, initiating a downward spiral in relations that continued under Joe Biden.
On the other hand, Beijing quickly found that Trump also offered advantages. As one of his first acts in office, he withdrew the USA from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The original purpose of the trade pact was to limit China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region. The US withdrawal was a gift to China – as was the weakening of numerous other global US alliances under Trump.
In the 2024 election campaign, Trump appeared more restrained about China. His appearances mainly focused on discrediting his opponents, first Biden and later Harris. He tended to comment on China when asked in interviews. He once again threatened to impose tariffs – even more so than in 2016: All imports from China could be subject to additional tariffs of 60 percent. The rest of the world would get away with 10 to 20 percent. This is how Trump intends to bring production back to the United States.
Economists at the Swiss UBS Bank have calculated that tariffs of 60 percent could more than halve China’s already slowing growth. Despite all the tensions, the USA remains China’s largest trading partner with a recent trade volume of 664 billion US dollars.
However, many observers believe that Trump would not go to the extreme, as the damage to the US economy would also be immense. So would a Trump with moderate tariffs be Beijing’s preferred choice? There are good reasons to assume that China has a “slight preference” for Trump, writes Zeno Leoni, China expert at King’s College London. However, this has less to do with tariffs and more with the geopolitical situation.
Leoni argues that Kamala Harris would probably continue the Biden administration’s strategy of uniting the political West to lead it as a geopolitical bloc against China. A second Trump administration, on the other hand, could weaken US alliances, which would be “extremely beneficial” for China.
It is striking that Beijing recently launched a charm offensive in its backyard. From proclaiming the wish for a “new beginning” with Japan to easing the border dispute with India, Chinese officials have sought to ease diplomatic tensions. Beijing has also signaled that it wants to improve relations with Britain and Australia.
This shows a learning curve. Although Trump damaged the US’s global reputation during his first term in office, China was not prepared to fill this gap at the time. On the contrary, Its wolf-warrior diplomacy and the disturbing images of the COVID pandemic also raised eyebrows around the world.
Perhaps more Chinese charm is also needed in Southeast Asia. In addition to the tensions in the South China Sea, the region’s economic orientation has recently shifted towards the USA. In the first half of the year, the United States was ahead of China as the primary export market of ASEAN countries. However, there is a greater willingness in China to negotiate new free trade agreements, writes Frank Lavin, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce, in an article for the US magazine Forbes.
Beijing also eyes Kamala Harris with uncertainty. Unlike Trump, she is not yet known as president. Since the start of her election campaign in July, she has only made cautious statements. It is difficult to predict Harris’ behavior towards China, said Diao Daming, Deputy Director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, in a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, calling her foreign policy direction largely unclear.
However, it is generally assumed that Harris would maintain the policy introduced under the Biden administration. This would mean trade disputes and technology blockades against China would continue either way. Unlike Trump, however, Harris might be more likely to try to unite the Western world against China. This would be anything but pleasant for Beijing.
Mr. Cramer, the Max Planck Society and the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) have maintained scientific-diplomatic relations for 50 years. A Chinese delegation recently visited Berlin to celebrate the anniversary. What was the meeting like?
Monday’s meeting with 120 Chinese colleagues was not only productive and professional, but also cordial. A rapprochement after the pandemic. CAS President Hou Jiangou has invited me to visit China, which I am happy to do. It’s easier to enter the country again. At the meeting, you could feel that many relationships and friendships have developed between researchers over the years and decades, enabling an exchange that goes beyond politics.
Science diplomacy was already relevant in 1974: As China considered the DFG’s relations with Taiwan to be too close, the German government asked the MPG to organize scientific relations. What is the status in 2024?
The geopolitical situation is giving us a hard time because there is a lot of mistrust, especially in the USA, but also in Europe. I believe we have to find our own way. Regardless of the election’s outcome, we must maintain our friendship and transatlantic cooperation with the USA, but we also need to cooperate with other countries such as China. We must take the risks involved seriously, take measures to contain them, and know which collaborations we can enter without risk.
You have announced a traffic light system for cooperation with China at the MPG. How are your Chinese partners reacting to this?
This system allows us to look at research projects and assess them for potential risks, such as proximity to the military. Two-thirds of the projects can simply continue because they are not suspicious. Other projects we look at in detail. A presidential commission, a “China Council,” will provide consultation in problematic cases. It will vote on whether to recommend the projects. I have openly told our Chinese colleagues about this and communicated that all of this also serves to protect our cooperation so that we can maintain it. They very much liked the idea.
Where exactly do you draw the line in cooperation?
We reject the use of research findings for military purposes and for surveillance of the population. We are also concerned about the restrictions on scientific freedom in China and the tightening of regulations on the availability of research data. A major success of this week’s meeting was that our Chinese colleagues ensured that research data that we receive in joint projects is also available to both sides at the same time. So, there is something to be gained from talking to each other instead of just talking about each other.
Only few German scientists are still working and researching in the People’s Republic. What are you doing at the MPG to remedy the lack of expertise on China?
Indeed, only 120 German scientists were working on long-term research projects in China during the pandemic in 2021. That is completely insufficient. The Max Planck Society alone has 1,400 to 1,500 Chinese employees in Germany. In order to improve this balance, we have agreed on so-called summer schools. These are low-threshold offers of four to six weeks for researchers from Germany to travel to China and get to know themselves with the scientific system there.
You have already warned against decoupling in the past. What would be missing if we decoupled from China’s scientific community?
We would lack access to unique research infrastructures, and long-standing research partnerships would collapse. We conducted a survey in the Max Planck Society in which 55 percent of respondents said that scientific cooperation with China is important or even essential for their own research. In the last five years, more than 3,700 joint publications have been published as part of cooperation projects between the MPG and CAS. This makes it our second most important international partner institution, after the French Center National de la Recherche Scientifique. In times of geopolitical conflict, we also need to keep a communication channel open that goes beyond politics.
The German government is sending out mixed signals: During his trip to China, the Federal Chancellor promises more research cooperation, while the Research Minister warns against it. What do you think is the right approach?
I thought it was right that Olaf Scholz made it clear during his visit to China in April that we want cooperation. It is difficult to rebuild structures once they have been lost. In general, the scientific community has to decide on collaborations itself, partly because you have to look into the details of the projects. Politics should provide support rather than intervene. Bettina Stark-Watzinger has also promised this. She also thanked us for our recommendations for China collaborations and for the fact that we are taking the issue seriously.
In your opinion, what political initiative would support the difficult task of building relationships?
First, outstanding Chinese researchers must be able to obtain visas for Germany more easily. We harm ourselves if we are too restrictive regarding entry permits. Then, I would like to pick up on what a Chinese colleague asked on Monday: “Where is our moonshot project anyway?” I would like to pass this question on to politicians as a wish: There are pressing human tasks that would be worth considering. For example, curing cancer, fighting the climate crisis, or switching to a sustainable economy. Specifically, we could imagine working on a global hydrogen infrastructure from chemistry to the economy, for example. After all, the government is already running such projects.
However, this was also the hope with Russia. ITER was a project that emerged after the Cold War. It is now under a lot of pressure since the start of the Russian war of aggression.
I believe that a moonshot project of this kind should pursue a bottom-up approach as well as a top-down one. We should find scientists who have a genuine interest in driving research projects forward and if we see potential for a sensible, efficient joint approach, then politicians should reinforce this. We will do everything in our power to promote such international collaborations, because I believe that they positively affect cultural understanding, the education of the next generations and global innovation.
In the end, however, we remain dependent on geopolitics. If China were to invade Taiwan in the near future, scientific relations would presumably also be severely affected. How impactful can science diplomacy actually be?
I would like to give you a concrete answer to that. CAS President Huo Jiangou has now visited us in Germany for the second time in one year, as well as European partners. After his last visit, he emphasized in interviews that we depend on mutual cooperation and also called on his government not to decouple. We have now talked extensively about how we benefit from exchange. But the reverse is also true. China benefits from our ideas, our approaches. Science diplomacy works well when both sides benefit.
China and Slovakia want to strengthen their trade and investment relations. During Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s visit to Beijing last week, the two countries agreed to form a strategic partnership. China’s head of state Xi Jinping said that he would encourage “powerful” Chinese companies to invest in the EU member state. He also invited Slovakian companies to approach the Chinese market.
Under Fico, Slovakia strives to build closer bilateral and economic relations and alliances with countries outside the European Union, including China, its largest trading partner outside the EU, and Russia. The head of government was accompanied to Beijing by the largest political and economic delegation in Slovakian history.
Xi said China would strengthen cooperation with Slovakia in areas such as new energy, transportation and logistics and infrastructure, the official Xinhua news agency reported. According to a joint statement, both sides agreed to deepen cooperation in green development and explore opportunities in green technology.
Slovakia was one of five EU countries that opposed the tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The country is home to a factory for electric vehicle batteries. The Chinese company Gotion High Tech and its Slovakian partner InoBat have invested 1.2 billion euros in the factory. Slovakia, which manufactures Volkswagen models for export, is also wary of being caught up in potential counter-tariffs following the EU’s decision on electric vehicles manufactured in China.
Like Hungarian head of state Viktor Orban, Fico criticized the EU’s Ukraine policy and spoke out against sanctions against Russia. The joint statement said both sides believe that cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries is a “useful addition” to Sino-European relations. rtr/grz
When Qin Liwen was still a little girl, she knew little about the world, but there was one thing she had learned quickly. That the society in which she grew up valued boys more than girls. “Boys are great and girls are so useless,” her father and his family told her. Raising a girl was like throwing away water one day. One day, she would get married anyway and move in with her husband’s family.
The walls of the houses in the village in the southern province of Guangxi, where she was born, were covered with posters promoting the one-child policy: “Having a child is good, boys and girls are equally good,” it said. But who in the village believed that? The practice of aborting female fetuses and killing newborns was particularly widespread in southern provinces such as Guangxi. “Families often sold their girls to other families who wanted a servant. They were supposed to look after their aging adoptive parents and one day marry the family’s son,” says Qin Liwen. “This practice has existed here for more than 1000 years.”
“If you are a woman growing up in a patriarchal society,” says Qin Liwen, 49, “you get wounded every day. We have so much anger inside us, and for a long time, we turned it against ourselves.” She doesn’t want that anymore. Qin Liwen has already done many things in her life. She is a journalist, has worked as a political analyst for think tanks and co-founded a bookshop and cultural center in Beijing. She is the mother of a grown-up daughter and now lives with her family in Berlin.
In 2018, she launched her feminist podcast: Seahorse Planet. It is very popular among Chinese women at home and abroad. It had 250,000 followers before the authorities banned the podcast from Chinese podcast platforms in 2021. Now, Chinese listeners with VPN access download the semi-weekly podcast from Qin’s website, then upload it to Chinese cloud servers or share it directly with friends. She logs 40,000 to 50,000 downloads per month but doesn’t know how many listeners she reaches.
This makes Qin’s podcast emblematic of a feminist movement that continues to spread despite all censorship efforts. In a country where all active protest is suppressed, the forced passive resistance of women is contributing to a profound change in society. And this is also what makes a look at feminism so fascinating: Over the past decade, the leadership has successfully marginalized almost all civil society groups. This is not so easy with women. “Both the movement and the resistance are intensifying,” says Qin.
“In 2018, the year I started the podcast, the MeToo movement reached China,” says Qin. “It met a generation of women that had never been seen before in China: Girls who had grown up as only children.” The capital and attention of an entire family was focused on them. “They are educated, often make a good living and now they felt how angry they were,” says Qin.
The Communist Party tried to suppress the movement. It sees feminism as a vehicle for foreign influence and propagates an increasingly conservative image of women. The figurehead of the Chinese MeToo movement, tennis player Peng Shuai, who accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault in 2021, disappeared from the public eye for three weeks. When she finally reappeared – presumably after pressure from the global #FreePengshuai campaign – her appearances seemed so eerie that it was hard not to suspect official pressure behind them.
This was followed by numerous other events that shook up women. For example, a massive scandal broke in 2022 over a video showing a woman in Xuzhou chained up in a cold shack with a necklace, obviously mentally unhealthy and – as it later turned out – a victim of trafficking. Her husband and tormentor fathered eight children with her. Months later, a video went viral showing men brutally beating four women in a restaurant in Tangsha who had rejected their advances.
In 2021, Qin aired its most successful episode to date. Topic: How to break free from the obsession with romance. “Women are so obsessed with romance because they think it will solve their problems in a patriarchal society,” says Qin. “Instead, you can divide up your needs. You can have good sex with this person, be understood by that person, and share interests with a third.” 700,000 people tuned in to the episode, including many angry men. They insulted her and reported her to the Chinese authorities – the next day, the podcast disappeared from all Chinese platforms.
“In China, too, there is an angry crowd of INCELS, involuntarily celibate men,” says Qin. There are even a particularly large number of them. Because so many female fetuses were aborted during the one-child policy, China now has 35 million more men than women. Most of them will probably never find a wife, which is a massive concern for the Chinese leadership. They fear unrest.
Even more worrying, from their perspective, is the rapidly declining birth rate. “It dropped dramatically, especially during the pandemic,” says Qin. A video from that time shows health authorities trying to take a couple to a quarantine center. When they resist, a police officer says: “If you are punished, it will harm your family for three generations.” The man replies, “We’re the last generation, thank you,” and closes the door. The phrase went viral.
Birth rates are also low in neighboring Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all countries where the cost of living is very high, women are very well-educated and think carefully about whether they want to give up their independence for a Confucian mother role. Yet, the context in China is special, according to Qin. “It’s a rebellion against the system and one’s parents. In Confucianism, one of the most important commandments is filial piety, obeying one’s parents and producing offspring.” And this is precisely what contemporary social phenomena have in common. When young people decide to opt out of the rat race and 躺平 tangping – simply lying flat – it is just as much a moment of passive resistance as the decision not to have children.
To boost the birth rate, the Communist Party offers financial incentives and praises traditional family values. The leadership has become more conservative and exclusively male in recent years. While no woman has ever made it onto the powerful Standing Committee, there is also not a single woman in the Politburo for the first time in decades. “With the death of the ranks of revolutionary women like Deng Yingchao, who fought in the civil war and campaigned for the right to divorce, the exclusive male networks in the Party were able to regain space,” says Qin.
Simply singing the praises of the beauty of traditional role models does not help the Party much. Birth rates are not rising. “Many feminist decisions are made in private,” says Qin. “The government realizes that it is very difficult to intervene there. The government can’t force people to have sex. Or forbid women to get together and have fun.” The life of a 51-year-old woman called Su Min was recently made into a movie. She had spent a lifetime looking after her violent husband, children and grandchildren until she suddenly realized: “I never had any fun myself.” So she bought a car, drove through China and reported live for an ever-growing audience. “When women make films, they still have a smaller budget than men,” says Qin. “But male directors see that there is money to be made, so they are integrating more and more content and roles into their own films and series.” This is how feminist content is spreading.
Qin Liwen’s podcast has since expanded into a network, a platform, and an event series. For its fifth anniversary in 2023, she organized a big celebration in Berlin with seminars, bands, and stand-up comedy. Chinese women from all over the world traveled to Berlin just for the event. This year, it was Tokyo’s turn. And next year, Australia. Angela Köckritz
(Transparency note: The author once also produced a geopolitical podcast together with Qin Liwen)
Hong Kong has established a 2,400-hectare marine park in the waters off the northern Lantau Island. Its main purpose is to protect the Chinese white dolphin, an endangered species whose numbers continue to decline. The proposal to establish a protected area was made in 2016 to compensate for the expansion of the airport. Twenty years ago, the waters were still home to around 200 of these rare animals. According to the Hong Kong Dolphin Society, only 30 to 40 remain today. Conservationists also blame the gigantic overseas bridge from Hong Kong to Zhuhai and Macau for the decline. A local environmental protection organization doubts that the protected area will bring the animals back. According to the latest data in 2022, only one dolphin was counted in North Lantau.
Chinese influence on public opinion in other countries via Facebook, TikTok, or X is nothing new – it even has a name: Spamouflage. Facebook calls it the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.” But anyone who would have expected the manipulative sources to favor a side in Tuesday’s US elections is mistaken.
Spamouflage does not explicitly endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, the strategy aims to drive political debates in the country to extremes and divide American society ever deeper. The lack of partisanship may not be a coincidence, but an expression of Chinese uncertainty as to what might be the better choice from Beijing’s perspective.
On the surface, this seems to be Donald Trump, who is said to take comparatively little interest in the world beyond the United States and would leave the field to China. Some say he is damaging democracy, which could play into China’s hands as an ambitious counter-model. However, not everyone shares this opinion. Jörn Petring has summarized how the People’s Republic views the two candidates and what their respective election win would mean.
Meanwhile, Tim Gabel spoke to Patrick Cramer, President of the Max Planck Society (MPG), for us and asked him about the gathering to mark the 50th anniversary of science-diplomacy relations with the Chinese National Academy of Sciences. According to Cramer, the geopolitical situation is causing problems because there is a great deal of mistrust in the USA and Europe.
He recommends maintaining friendship and transatlantic cooperation with the USA, regardless of the election outcome. However, he also stressed the need for cooperation with other countries, such as China. “We must take the associated risks seriously, take measures to contain them, and know which collaborations we can enter without risk.”
China vehemently opposes accusations of interfering in the US election campaign. But the network analysts at Graphika paint a different picture. The company is studying the origins of highly opinionated and controversial comments on social media. A few weeks ago, Graphika published a report that identified the Chinese state as the driver of a campaign that “has become more aggressive in its efforts to influence US political conversations ahead of the 2024 presidential election.”
Chinese interference in shaping opinions in other countries via Facebook, TikTok, or X is not new; it even has a name: Spamouflage. Facebook calls it the “largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world.” But anyone who would have expected the manipulative sources to favor a political orientation is mistaken. Spamouflage does not explicitly endorse Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Instead, the strategy aims more to drive political debates in the country to extremes and cause even wider rifts in American society.
The lack of partisanship may not be a coincidence, but an expression of Chinese uncertainty about the better choice from Beijing’s perspective. On the surface, it seems to be Donald Trump, who is said to take comparatively little interest in the world outside the US and leave the field to China. Some say he is damaging democracy, which could play into China’s hands as an ambitious counter-model.
But by no means everyone shares this opinion. In an article for the Lowy Institute, Richard McGregor writes that the perception of Trump in China is associated with a great deal of skepticism, as he is considered unpredictable. China already experienced this during his first term. During the 2016 election campaign, China was one of Trump’s core issues. He portrayed Beijing as an economic rival and threat. Once in office, he sparked a tariff and trade war, initiating a downward spiral in relations that continued under Joe Biden.
On the other hand, Beijing quickly found that Trump also offered advantages. As one of his first acts in office, he withdrew the USA from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The original purpose of the trade pact was to limit China’s influence in the Asia-Pacific region. The US withdrawal was a gift to China – as was the weakening of numerous other global US alliances under Trump.
In the 2024 election campaign, Trump appeared more restrained about China. His appearances mainly focused on discrediting his opponents, first Biden and later Harris. He tended to comment on China when asked in interviews. He once again threatened to impose tariffs – even more so than in 2016: All imports from China could be subject to additional tariffs of 60 percent. The rest of the world would get away with 10 to 20 percent. This is how Trump intends to bring production back to the United States.
Economists at the Swiss UBS Bank have calculated that tariffs of 60 percent could more than halve China’s already slowing growth. Despite all the tensions, the USA remains China’s largest trading partner with a recent trade volume of 664 billion US dollars.
However, many observers believe that Trump would not go to the extreme, as the damage to the US economy would also be immense. So would a Trump with moderate tariffs be Beijing’s preferred choice? There are good reasons to assume that China has a “slight preference” for Trump, writes Zeno Leoni, China expert at King’s College London. However, this has less to do with tariffs and more with the geopolitical situation.
Leoni argues that Kamala Harris would probably continue the Biden administration’s strategy of uniting the political West to lead it as a geopolitical bloc against China. A second Trump administration, on the other hand, could weaken US alliances, which would be “extremely beneficial” for China.
It is striking that Beijing recently launched a charm offensive in its backyard. From proclaiming the wish for a “new beginning” with Japan to easing the border dispute with India, Chinese officials have sought to ease diplomatic tensions. Beijing has also signaled that it wants to improve relations with Britain and Australia.
This shows a learning curve. Although Trump damaged the US’s global reputation during his first term in office, China was not prepared to fill this gap at the time. On the contrary, Its wolf-warrior diplomacy and the disturbing images of the COVID pandemic also raised eyebrows around the world.
Perhaps more Chinese charm is also needed in Southeast Asia. In addition to the tensions in the South China Sea, the region’s economic orientation has recently shifted towards the USA. In the first half of the year, the United States was ahead of China as the primary export market of ASEAN countries. However, there is a greater willingness in China to negotiate new free trade agreements, writes Frank Lavin, former Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade at the US Department of Commerce, in an article for the US magazine Forbes.
Beijing also eyes Kamala Harris with uncertainty. Unlike Trump, she is not yet known as president. Since the start of her election campaign in July, she has only made cautious statements. It is difficult to predict Harris’ behavior towards China, said Diao Daming, Deputy Director of the Center for American Studies at Renmin University in Beijing, in a recent interview with Deutsche Welle, calling her foreign policy direction largely unclear.
However, it is generally assumed that Harris would maintain the policy introduced under the Biden administration. This would mean trade disputes and technology blockades against China would continue either way. Unlike Trump, however, Harris might be more likely to try to unite the Western world against China. This would be anything but pleasant for Beijing.
Mr. Cramer, the Max Planck Society and the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) have maintained scientific-diplomatic relations for 50 years. A Chinese delegation recently visited Berlin to celebrate the anniversary. What was the meeting like?
Monday’s meeting with 120 Chinese colleagues was not only productive and professional, but also cordial. A rapprochement after the pandemic. CAS President Hou Jiangou has invited me to visit China, which I am happy to do. It’s easier to enter the country again. At the meeting, you could feel that many relationships and friendships have developed between researchers over the years and decades, enabling an exchange that goes beyond politics.
Science diplomacy was already relevant in 1974: As China considered the DFG’s relations with Taiwan to be too close, the German government asked the MPG to organize scientific relations. What is the status in 2024?
The geopolitical situation is giving us a hard time because there is a lot of mistrust, especially in the USA, but also in Europe. I believe we have to find our own way. Regardless of the election’s outcome, we must maintain our friendship and transatlantic cooperation with the USA, but we also need to cooperate with other countries such as China. We must take the risks involved seriously, take measures to contain them, and know which collaborations we can enter without risk.
You have announced a traffic light system for cooperation with China at the MPG. How are your Chinese partners reacting to this?
This system allows us to look at research projects and assess them for potential risks, such as proximity to the military. Two-thirds of the projects can simply continue because they are not suspicious. Other projects we look at in detail. A presidential commission, a “China Council,” will provide consultation in problematic cases. It will vote on whether to recommend the projects. I have openly told our Chinese colleagues about this and communicated that all of this also serves to protect our cooperation so that we can maintain it. They very much liked the idea.
Where exactly do you draw the line in cooperation?
We reject the use of research findings for military purposes and for surveillance of the population. We are also concerned about the restrictions on scientific freedom in China and the tightening of regulations on the availability of research data. A major success of this week’s meeting was that our Chinese colleagues ensured that research data that we receive in joint projects is also available to both sides at the same time. So, there is something to be gained from talking to each other instead of just talking about each other.
Only few German scientists are still working and researching in the People’s Republic. What are you doing at the MPG to remedy the lack of expertise on China?
Indeed, only 120 German scientists were working on long-term research projects in China during the pandemic in 2021. That is completely insufficient. The Max Planck Society alone has 1,400 to 1,500 Chinese employees in Germany. In order to improve this balance, we have agreed on so-called summer schools. These are low-threshold offers of four to six weeks for researchers from Germany to travel to China and get to know themselves with the scientific system there.
You have already warned against decoupling in the past. What would be missing if we decoupled from China’s scientific community?
We would lack access to unique research infrastructures, and long-standing research partnerships would collapse. We conducted a survey in the Max Planck Society in which 55 percent of respondents said that scientific cooperation with China is important or even essential for their own research. In the last five years, more than 3,700 joint publications have been published as part of cooperation projects between the MPG and CAS. This makes it our second most important international partner institution, after the French Center National de la Recherche Scientifique. In times of geopolitical conflict, we also need to keep a communication channel open that goes beyond politics.
The German government is sending out mixed signals: During his trip to China, the Federal Chancellor promises more research cooperation, while the Research Minister warns against it. What do you think is the right approach?
I thought it was right that Olaf Scholz made it clear during his visit to China in April that we want cooperation. It is difficult to rebuild structures once they have been lost. In general, the scientific community has to decide on collaborations itself, partly because you have to look into the details of the projects. Politics should provide support rather than intervene. Bettina Stark-Watzinger has also promised this. She also thanked us for our recommendations for China collaborations and for the fact that we are taking the issue seriously.
In your opinion, what political initiative would support the difficult task of building relationships?
First, outstanding Chinese researchers must be able to obtain visas for Germany more easily. We harm ourselves if we are too restrictive regarding entry permits. Then, I would like to pick up on what a Chinese colleague asked on Monday: “Where is our moonshot project anyway?” I would like to pass this question on to politicians as a wish: There are pressing human tasks that would be worth considering. For example, curing cancer, fighting the climate crisis, or switching to a sustainable economy. Specifically, we could imagine working on a global hydrogen infrastructure from chemistry to the economy, for example. After all, the government is already running such projects.
However, this was also the hope with Russia. ITER was a project that emerged after the Cold War. It is now under a lot of pressure since the start of the Russian war of aggression.
I believe that a moonshot project of this kind should pursue a bottom-up approach as well as a top-down one. We should find scientists who have a genuine interest in driving research projects forward and if we see potential for a sensible, efficient joint approach, then politicians should reinforce this. We will do everything in our power to promote such international collaborations, because I believe that they positively affect cultural understanding, the education of the next generations and global innovation.
In the end, however, we remain dependent on geopolitics. If China were to invade Taiwan in the near future, scientific relations would presumably also be severely affected. How impactful can science diplomacy actually be?
I would like to give you a concrete answer to that. CAS President Huo Jiangou has now visited us in Germany for the second time in one year, as well as European partners. After his last visit, he emphasized in interviews that we depend on mutual cooperation and also called on his government not to decouple. We have now talked extensively about how we benefit from exchange. But the reverse is also true. China benefits from our ideas, our approaches. Science diplomacy works well when both sides benefit.
China and Slovakia want to strengthen their trade and investment relations. During Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico’s visit to Beijing last week, the two countries agreed to form a strategic partnership. China’s head of state Xi Jinping said that he would encourage “powerful” Chinese companies to invest in the EU member state. He also invited Slovakian companies to approach the Chinese market.
Under Fico, Slovakia strives to build closer bilateral and economic relations and alliances with countries outside the European Union, including China, its largest trading partner outside the EU, and Russia. The head of government was accompanied to Beijing by the largest political and economic delegation in Slovakian history.
Xi said China would strengthen cooperation with Slovakia in areas such as new energy, transportation and logistics and infrastructure, the official Xinhua news agency reported. According to a joint statement, both sides agreed to deepen cooperation in green development and explore opportunities in green technology.
Slovakia was one of five EU countries that opposed the tariffs on Chinese electric cars. The country is home to a factory for electric vehicle batteries. The Chinese company Gotion High Tech and its Slovakian partner InoBat have invested 1.2 billion euros in the factory. Slovakia, which manufactures Volkswagen models for export, is also wary of being caught up in potential counter-tariffs following the EU’s decision on electric vehicles manufactured in China.
Like Hungarian head of state Viktor Orban, Fico criticized the EU’s Ukraine policy and spoke out against sanctions against Russia. The joint statement said both sides believe that cooperation between China and the Central and Eastern European countries is a “useful addition” to Sino-European relations. rtr/grz
When Qin Liwen was still a little girl, she knew little about the world, but there was one thing she had learned quickly. That the society in which she grew up valued boys more than girls. “Boys are great and girls are so useless,” her father and his family told her. Raising a girl was like throwing away water one day. One day, she would get married anyway and move in with her husband’s family.
The walls of the houses in the village in the southern province of Guangxi, where she was born, were covered with posters promoting the one-child policy: “Having a child is good, boys and girls are equally good,” it said. But who in the village believed that? The practice of aborting female fetuses and killing newborns was particularly widespread in southern provinces such as Guangxi. “Families often sold their girls to other families who wanted a servant. They were supposed to look after their aging adoptive parents and one day marry the family’s son,” says Qin Liwen. “This practice has existed here for more than 1000 years.”
“If you are a woman growing up in a patriarchal society,” says Qin Liwen, 49, “you get wounded every day. We have so much anger inside us, and for a long time, we turned it against ourselves.” She doesn’t want that anymore. Qin Liwen has already done many things in her life. She is a journalist, has worked as a political analyst for think tanks and co-founded a bookshop and cultural center in Beijing. She is the mother of a grown-up daughter and now lives with her family in Berlin.
In 2018, she launched her feminist podcast: Seahorse Planet. It is very popular among Chinese women at home and abroad. It had 250,000 followers before the authorities banned the podcast from Chinese podcast platforms in 2021. Now, Chinese listeners with VPN access download the semi-weekly podcast from Qin’s website, then upload it to Chinese cloud servers or share it directly with friends. She logs 40,000 to 50,000 downloads per month but doesn’t know how many listeners she reaches.
This makes Qin’s podcast emblematic of a feminist movement that continues to spread despite all censorship efforts. In a country where all active protest is suppressed, the forced passive resistance of women is contributing to a profound change in society. And this is also what makes a look at feminism so fascinating: Over the past decade, the leadership has successfully marginalized almost all civil society groups. This is not so easy with women. “Both the movement and the resistance are intensifying,” says Qin.
“In 2018, the year I started the podcast, the MeToo movement reached China,” says Qin. “It met a generation of women that had never been seen before in China: Girls who had grown up as only children.” The capital and attention of an entire family was focused on them. “They are educated, often make a good living and now they felt how angry they were,” says Qin.
The Communist Party tried to suppress the movement. It sees feminism as a vehicle for foreign influence and propagates an increasingly conservative image of women. The figurehead of the Chinese MeToo movement, tennis player Peng Shuai, who accused former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of sexual assault in 2021, disappeared from the public eye for three weeks. When she finally reappeared – presumably after pressure from the global #FreePengshuai campaign – her appearances seemed so eerie that it was hard not to suspect official pressure behind them.
This was followed by numerous other events that shook up women. For example, a massive scandal broke in 2022 over a video showing a woman in Xuzhou chained up in a cold shack with a necklace, obviously mentally unhealthy and – as it later turned out – a victim of trafficking. Her husband and tormentor fathered eight children with her. Months later, a video went viral showing men brutally beating four women in a restaurant in Tangsha who had rejected their advances.
In 2021, Qin aired its most successful episode to date. Topic: How to break free from the obsession with romance. “Women are so obsessed with romance because they think it will solve their problems in a patriarchal society,” says Qin. “Instead, you can divide up your needs. You can have good sex with this person, be understood by that person, and share interests with a third.” 700,000 people tuned in to the episode, including many angry men. They insulted her and reported her to the Chinese authorities – the next day, the podcast disappeared from all Chinese platforms.
“In China, too, there is an angry crowd of INCELS, involuntarily celibate men,” says Qin. There are even a particularly large number of them. Because so many female fetuses were aborted during the one-child policy, China now has 35 million more men than women. Most of them will probably never find a wife, which is a massive concern for the Chinese leadership. They fear unrest.
Even more worrying, from their perspective, is the rapidly declining birth rate. “It dropped dramatically, especially during the pandemic,” says Qin. A video from that time shows health authorities trying to take a couple to a quarantine center. When they resist, a police officer says: “If you are punished, it will harm your family for three generations.” The man replies, “We’re the last generation, thank you,” and closes the door. The phrase went viral.
Birth rates are also low in neighboring Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, all countries where the cost of living is very high, women are very well-educated and think carefully about whether they want to give up their independence for a Confucian mother role. Yet, the context in China is special, according to Qin. “It’s a rebellion against the system and one’s parents. In Confucianism, one of the most important commandments is filial piety, obeying one’s parents and producing offspring.” And this is precisely what contemporary social phenomena have in common. When young people decide to opt out of the rat race and 躺平 tangping – simply lying flat – it is just as much a moment of passive resistance as the decision not to have children.
To boost the birth rate, the Communist Party offers financial incentives and praises traditional family values. The leadership has become more conservative and exclusively male in recent years. While no woman has ever made it onto the powerful Standing Committee, there is also not a single woman in the Politburo for the first time in decades. “With the death of the ranks of revolutionary women like Deng Yingchao, who fought in the civil war and campaigned for the right to divorce, the exclusive male networks in the Party were able to regain space,” says Qin.
Simply singing the praises of the beauty of traditional role models does not help the Party much. Birth rates are not rising. “Many feminist decisions are made in private,” says Qin. “The government realizes that it is very difficult to intervene there. The government can’t force people to have sex. Or forbid women to get together and have fun.” The life of a 51-year-old woman called Su Min was recently made into a movie. She had spent a lifetime looking after her violent husband, children and grandchildren until she suddenly realized: “I never had any fun myself.” So she bought a car, drove through China and reported live for an ever-growing audience. “When women make films, they still have a smaller budget than men,” says Qin. “But male directors see that there is money to be made, so they are integrating more and more content and roles into their own films and series.” This is how feminist content is spreading.
Qin Liwen’s podcast has since expanded into a network, a platform, and an event series. For its fifth anniversary in 2023, she organized a big celebration in Berlin with seminars, bands, and stand-up comedy. Chinese women from all over the world traveled to Berlin just for the event. This year, it was Tokyo’s turn. And next year, Australia. Angela Köckritz
(Transparency note: The author once also produced a geopolitical podcast together with Qin Liwen)
Hong Kong has established a 2,400-hectare marine park in the waters off the northern Lantau Island. Its main purpose is to protect the Chinese white dolphin, an endangered species whose numbers continue to decline. The proposal to establish a protected area was made in 2016 to compensate for the expansion of the airport. Twenty years ago, the waters were still home to around 200 of these rare animals. According to the Hong Kong Dolphin Society, only 30 to 40 remain today. Conservationists also blame the gigantic overseas bridge from Hong Kong to Zhuhai and Macau for the decline. A local environmental protection organization doubts that the protected area will bring the animals back. According to the latest data in 2022, only one dolphin was counted in North Lantau.
