Today, the first EU citizens cast their votes on the future composition of the European Parliament. The larger parties, in particular, have pledged to increase their China expertise. The extent of China’s influence on the European Parliament has recently been highlighted by the espionage case involving AfD staffer Jian Guo, as well as investigative reports on the Dutch party NL Plan, which is allegedly funded by Beijing’s United Front.
Amelie Richter examined the actual state of China expertise on the EU candidate lists. Although the newly elected European Parliament will again have a China delegation, and there are indeed China and Taiwan experts among them, one thing is already clear: The gap left by Reinhard Buetikofer, the most prominent China expert in the European Parliament, will not be easily filled.
Zhu Zhaojiang, the founder of the smartphone company Transsion, knew he was too late for his home market. The Chinese mobile phone market was saturated, and the competition was too fierce. Instead, the manufacturer from Shenzhen took a bold step. He focused on less affluent markets, and with great success. Today, in the Global South and Africa, Transsion phones are the number one brand, more well-known than Apple and Samsung. Their growth rates are so remarkable that they already overshadow the Western competition in some international comparisons.
It’s not just the relatively low prices that have made this success possible, writes Joern Petring. Transsion smartphones are better adapted to local conditions than those of their competitors. For example, camera filters are optimized for darker skin tones and the batteries last longer. In countries that are regularly affected by power outages, this can be a real competitive advantage.
Starting today, the first EU citizens are heading to the polls to vote on the future composition of the European Parliament. The EU election begins in the Netherlands, while Germany will vote on Sunday. The future parliament needs to focus on developing expertise on China – there is a notable shortage of sinologists, at least on the German electoral lists.
“From a personnel perspective, there’s a significant gap in China expertise on the EU election lists,” says Marina Rudyak, a sinologist from Heidelberg University. “While dealing with the People’s Republic is a crucial issue for the EU’s future, it’s only partially reflected in the programs, not so much in the actual candidate lists.”
Reinhard Buetikofer, the Green party’s European politician and the EU Parliament’s most prominent China expert, is not running for re-election. Sinologist Janka Oertel, Director of the Asia Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was not elected to the Greens’ European list. “I’ve noticed a general decline in Asian foreign policy expertise within the Greens,” says Rudyak.
There is Sergey Lagodinsky, another foreign policy expert, but his focus is on Russia and Ukraine. “The FDP’s Agnes Strack-Zimmermann also concentrates more on this region rather than on China and Asia.”
Rudyak points out a broader issue: “I think there’s a general lack of awareness about the urgency of the China issue. It’s assumed that no one outside the China bubble is interested.” In the election campaign, China mainly plays a role in economic security discussions, but only at a high EU level, such as in debates between the lead candidates. In Germany itself, there has been very little mention of China in the EU election campaign.
The newly elected EU Parliament will have a China delegation again. These delegations are intended for interparliamentary exchanges with non-EU countries, which is particularly challenging in the case of China. Beijing had imposed sanctions on the previous chair of the China delegation, Green politician Buetikofer. The current delegation has 37 full members and 34 substitutes. Typically, the composition should reflect the power balance in the EU Parliament.
Besides Buetikofer, Greens members Henrike Hahn and Alexandra Geese were also part of the China delegation. Viola Cramon-Taubadel served as a human rights expert substitute. René Repasi from the SPD is the vice-chair of the China delegation, and his party colleague Thomas Rudner is a member. The German Liberals are represented by Moritz Koerner.
The CDU/CSU had three representatives in the delegation. However, two of them, Markus Pieper and Karolin Braunsberger-Reinhold, are not running in the 2024 EU election. CSU politician Monika Hohlmeier is on the list in Bavaria. The Left had a substitute member in the China delegation, Helmut Scholz. The AfD and Free Voters were not represented in the delegation.
The China issue indirectly involves multiple EU Parliament committees. Green politician Anna Cavazzini, for example, led the legislation on the EU Supply Chain Act. SPD European politician Bernd Lange was the chair of the powerful EU Trade Committee, which among other things, scrapped the investment agreement CAI and was responsible for trade tools like the Anti-Coercion Instrument against economic coercion. SPD politician Joachim Schuster, who is running again in Bremen/Bremerhaven where BYD regularly docks with its super freighters filled with e-cars, was also part of the committee.
CDU politicians Daniel Caspary and Michael Gahler have experience with China as well. Caspary was instrumental behind the International Procurement Instrument, first applied in the case of medical technology. Gahler chairs the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group and was also sanctioned by Beijing in March 2021.
Friendship groups are not official EU Parliament bodies. A China Friendship Group was dissolved after a funding scandal. The Free Voters in the European Parliament have Engin Eroglu, who focuses on Uyghur rights in China.
The party Volt does not significantly mention China in its current election program. The party did not respond to inquiries about whether its list includes candidates with China expertise. In 2020, Volt issued a China proposal.
As for the AfD, their candidate Maximilian Krah has been embroiled in several scandals, including allegations that his Chinese assistant was potentially spying for Beijing. Krah was a member of the trade committee until the end of January and sat on the USA delegation.
The satirical party “Die Partei” had its own China scandal a few years ago: Nico Semsrott left the party in 2021 after a racist tweet from party colleague Martin Sonneborn, who had used the stereotype that Asians cannot pronounce the letter “R” in a humorously intended tweet.
Tecno, Itel, Infinix: These smartphone brands may be largely unknown in the West, but in Africa and increasingly in other regions of the global south, they are becoming more familiar to many people than Apple or Samsung.
Behind these devices stands Transsion, headquartered in Shenzhen, southern China. It’s also a name not commonly known in the West. However, in recent years, the company has secured a substantial share of the global smartphone market.
In the latest ranking of the world’s largest manufacturers by market observer IDC, Transsion ranked fourth behind Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi. The company’s growth rates are particularly impressive: From January to March, Samsung sold 60.1 million smartphones, a decrease of 0.7 percent compared to the previous year. Apple’s sales even dropped by 9.6 percent to 50.1 million iPhones. Xiaomi sold 40.8 million devices (+33.8 percent). But Transsion overshadowed all with an 84.5 percent growth and 28.5 million devices sold. Even with potentially lower future growth rates, the global smartphone crown seems within reach for the company.
It’s remarkable that Transsion, which was founded as Tecno Mobile in 2006, grew to its current size without benefiting from its massive home market. Founder Zhu Zhaojiang made a farsighted decision at that time: He realized it would be challenging to gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive Chinese market, where many companies were ready to start their smartphone production. Both Huawei and Oppo were preparing to launch their first devices then. Xiaomi followed a few years later.
The situation then is somewhat reminiscent of today’s electric car manufacturers in China. Too many companies are trying to establish themselves in the home market, making it difficult to operate profitably. Zhu Zhaojiang took a different path: He left the Chinese smartphone market untouched and instead specialized in affordable devices for the African market.
In 2017, his company became the market leader on the continent for the first time and has since been known as the “smartphone king of Africa”. Since then, the market share in Africa has consistently been between 40 percent and 50 percent. Transsion has also been successfully expanding into the Middle East and South Asia, where it is a market leader in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Transsion has established factories in Ethiopia, India and Bangladesh to produce and supply products for local markets.
The company gains an advantage by offering devices tailored to the needs of African customers, such as smartphones with cameras optimized for darker skin tones. Another technological feature that is particularly popular in Africa and South Asia is the dual-SIM functionality.
This allows users to use two different SIM cards simultaneously, which is beneficial given the frequent network instability and varying tariff structures in these regions. Transsion has also invested in developing smartphones with longer battery life, which is crucial in areas where power outages are common and access to electricity can be limited.
In addition to hardware adaptations, Transsion has developed software solutions specifically for its markets. For instance, the Boomplay music app, tailored to the African market, offers local music content that caters to the users’ tastes. Similarly, the Scooper news app provides local and international news in a format relevant to local readers. Both apps have over 50 million monthly users.
Kai Mueller – Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Germany
Kai Mueller has been active in various human rights organizations for over 20 years. Since 2005, he has served as the Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet in Germany. He coordinates and directs advocacy projects at both national and international levels. As an expert witness, he informs the German Bundestag about Chinese human rights abuses. As a lobbyist, he advocates for the Tibetan people’s rights in various United Nations bodies.
Tenzyn Zoechbauer – Executive Director of the Tibet Initiative Germany e.V.
Tenzyn Zoechbauer, whose mother is Tibetan, was born in Vienna in 1991. She is frequently seen at protest events advocating for a self-determined Tibet and denouncing Chinese government influence while showing solidarity with civil society actors in China, such as the White Paper protests by young Chinese in December 2022. Zoechbauer’s grandmother fled Tibet in the early 1960s. Zoechbauer herself hopes to one day visit Tibet as a free country.
Glacier Kwong – Activist
Glacier Chung Ching Kwong became the face of the Hong Kong protest movement in Germany in 2019. Alongside prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, she sought support at places like Berlin’s Humboldt University and the Federal Press Conference. Kwong now works as a lead analyst at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, focusing on surveillance and digital resistance. She is a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Hamburg and a former spokesperson for Hong Kong’s internet rights group Keyboard Frontline.
Ray Wong – Chair of Freedom for Hong Kong e.V.
Ray Wong Toi-yeung is a democracy activist from Hong Kong and an advisor for the NGO Hong Kong Watch. In 2015, he founded the political group “Hong Kong Indigenous” in his hometown, which became one of the leading parties in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. In 2016, Wong was imprisoned for his political activism and faced up to ten years in prison. He fled Hong Kong in 2017 and was granted asylum in Germany the following year. He currently lives and studies in Goettingen.
Nora Sausmikat – Head of China Desk Urgewald
Nora Sausmikat was a foreign student in China during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, an experience that deeply influenced her. She soon dedicated herself to political research on participation and memory culture in China. Sausmikat helped establish the China Program at the Asienhaus Foundation and developed an exchange program between European and Chinese NGOs. Since 2019, she has led the China Desk at the environmental and human rights organization Urgewald, based in Sassenberg, Westphalia.
Li Shuo – Director of the climate hub at the Asia society
Li Shuo is a senior policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, focusing on air pollution, energy policy, water and biodiversity. Li joined Greenpeace in 2011, one of the largest international NGOs in China. Educated in Nanjing and Washington, Li negotiates multilateral environmental agreements for the organization, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Sandra Schulze – Managing Director at Bildungsnetzwerk China gGmbH
As the new managing director of the Educational Network China, Sandra Schulze aims to increase China expertise in Germany, especially in schools. Previously, she was the Area Manager for China at Berlin Partner for Business and Technology. Schulze studied Chinese at Beijing Foreign Studies University and is an alumna of “Zukunftsbruecke – Chinese-German Young Professional Campus”. She lived in China for several years as a child.
Hanno Schedler – Consultant at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP)
Hanno Schedler advocates for the rights of religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities. Since 2008, in the Department of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect at GfbV, he has focused on Chinese human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang. Schedler highlights the responsibilities of German companies at shareholder meetings and informs the Federal Press Conference about the situation of the Uyghurs. He studied political science, sociology and sinology in Trier and Rennes, France.
Haiyuer Kuerban – Director of the Berlin Office of the World Uyghur Congress
The 40-year-old gives a face to the tragic plight of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang through his political engagement. As the director of the Berlin office of the World Uyghur Congress, Kuerban coordinates the activities of about 30 organizations advocating for Uyghur rights. He conducts public relations and lobbying work for his people, who are silenced in China. Kuerban discusses human rights violations by the Chinese government with politicians and the media. Many of his close family members still live in Xinjiang and are subjected to Chinese repression, like millions of others.
Joachim Glatter – President of the German-Chinese Lawyers Association
As the president of the DCJV, Joachim Glatter promotes knowledge of Chinese law in Germany and German law in China, fostering academic exchange between lawyers from both countries. Glatter has 25 years of experience advising multinational and mid-sized companies on Chinese foreign investment and trade law, as well as arbitration in China. He is a listed mediator for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and the Shanghai International Arbitration Center (SHIAC). Until the end of 2014, he was a partner in several large international law firms.
Rap is a popular music genre in China that can convey social criticism between the lines. One of the latest examples is the song “Factory” by Zhang Fangzhao. The 27-year-old gained a wider audience through the talent show “The Rap of China” and in this song, he tells the story of his escape from his hometown of Jiaozuo in Henan Province. In recent years, the area has faced environmental pollution, mass layoffs and population outflows. The music video depicts the region in bleak colors but also celebrates the resilience of its residents. The song struck a chord on social media, with thousands of people sharing their experiences on platforms like Weibo about still being discriminated against in cities like Shanghai as country bumpkins from the provinces.
Today, the first EU citizens cast their votes on the future composition of the European Parliament. The larger parties, in particular, have pledged to increase their China expertise. The extent of China’s influence on the European Parliament has recently been highlighted by the espionage case involving AfD staffer Jian Guo, as well as investigative reports on the Dutch party NL Plan, which is allegedly funded by Beijing’s United Front.
Amelie Richter examined the actual state of China expertise on the EU candidate lists. Although the newly elected European Parliament will again have a China delegation, and there are indeed China and Taiwan experts among them, one thing is already clear: The gap left by Reinhard Buetikofer, the most prominent China expert in the European Parliament, will not be easily filled.
Zhu Zhaojiang, the founder of the smartphone company Transsion, knew he was too late for his home market. The Chinese mobile phone market was saturated, and the competition was too fierce. Instead, the manufacturer from Shenzhen took a bold step. He focused on less affluent markets, and with great success. Today, in the Global South and Africa, Transsion phones are the number one brand, more well-known than Apple and Samsung. Their growth rates are so remarkable that they already overshadow the Western competition in some international comparisons.
It’s not just the relatively low prices that have made this success possible, writes Joern Petring. Transsion smartphones are better adapted to local conditions than those of their competitors. For example, camera filters are optimized for darker skin tones and the batteries last longer. In countries that are regularly affected by power outages, this can be a real competitive advantage.
Starting today, the first EU citizens are heading to the polls to vote on the future composition of the European Parliament. The EU election begins in the Netherlands, while Germany will vote on Sunday. The future parliament needs to focus on developing expertise on China – there is a notable shortage of sinologists, at least on the German electoral lists.
“From a personnel perspective, there’s a significant gap in China expertise on the EU election lists,” says Marina Rudyak, a sinologist from Heidelberg University. “While dealing with the People’s Republic is a crucial issue for the EU’s future, it’s only partially reflected in the programs, not so much in the actual candidate lists.”
Reinhard Buetikofer, the Green party’s European politician and the EU Parliament’s most prominent China expert, is not running for re-election. Sinologist Janka Oertel, Director of the Asia Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, was not elected to the Greens’ European list. “I’ve noticed a general decline in Asian foreign policy expertise within the Greens,” says Rudyak.
There is Sergey Lagodinsky, another foreign policy expert, but his focus is on Russia and Ukraine. “The FDP’s Agnes Strack-Zimmermann also concentrates more on this region rather than on China and Asia.”
Rudyak points out a broader issue: “I think there’s a general lack of awareness about the urgency of the China issue. It’s assumed that no one outside the China bubble is interested.” In the election campaign, China mainly plays a role in economic security discussions, but only at a high EU level, such as in debates between the lead candidates. In Germany itself, there has been very little mention of China in the EU election campaign.
The newly elected EU Parliament will have a China delegation again. These delegations are intended for interparliamentary exchanges with non-EU countries, which is particularly challenging in the case of China. Beijing had imposed sanctions on the previous chair of the China delegation, Green politician Buetikofer. The current delegation has 37 full members and 34 substitutes. Typically, the composition should reflect the power balance in the EU Parliament.
Besides Buetikofer, Greens members Henrike Hahn and Alexandra Geese were also part of the China delegation. Viola Cramon-Taubadel served as a human rights expert substitute. René Repasi from the SPD is the vice-chair of the China delegation, and his party colleague Thomas Rudner is a member. The German Liberals are represented by Moritz Koerner.
The CDU/CSU had three representatives in the delegation. However, two of them, Markus Pieper and Karolin Braunsberger-Reinhold, are not running in the 2024 EU election. CSU politician Monika Hohlmeier is on the list in Bavaria. The Left had a substitute member in the China delegation, Helmut Scholz. The AfD and Free Voters were not represented in the delegation.
The China issue indirectly involves multiple EU Parliament committees. Green politician Anna Cavazzini, for example, led the legislation on the EU Supply Chain Act. SPD European politician Bernd Lange was the chair of the powerful EU Trade Committee, which among other things, scrapped the investment agreement CAI and was responsible for trade tools like the Anti-Coercion Instrument against economic coercion. SPD politician Joachim Schuster, who is running again in Bremen/Bremerhaven where BYD regularly docks with its super freighters filled with e-cars, was also part of the committee.
CDU politicians Daniel Caspary and Michael Gahler have experience with China as well. Caspary was instrumental behind the International Procurement Instrument, first applied in the case of medical technology. Gahler chairs the EU Parliament’s Taiwan Friendship Group and was also sanctioned by Beijing in March 2021.
Friendship groups are not official EU Parliament bodies. A China Friendship Group was dissolved after a funding scandal. The Free Voters in the European Parliament have Engin Eroglu, who focuses on Uyghur rights in China.
The party Volt does not significantly mention China in its current election program. The party did not respond to inquiries about whether its list includes candidates with China expertise. In 2020, Volt issued a China proposal.
As for the AfD, their candidate Maximilian Krah has been embroiled in several scandals, including allegations that his Chinese assistant was potentially spying for Beijing. Krah was a member of the trade committee until the end of January and sat on the USA delegation.
The satirical party “Die Partei” had its own China scandal a few years ago: Nico Semsrott left the party in 2021 after a racist tweet from party colleague Martin Sonneborn, who had used the stereotype that Asians cannot pronounce the letter “R” in a humorously intended tweet.
Tecno, Itel, Infinix: These smartphone brands may be largely unknown in the West, but in Africa and increasingly in other regions of the global south, they are becoming more familiar to many people than Apple or Samsung.
Behind these devices stands Transsion, headquartered in Shenzhen, southern China. It’s also a name not commonly known in the West. However, in recent years, the company has secured a substantial share of the global smartphone market.
In the latest ranking of the world’s largest manufacturers by market observer IDC, Transsion ranked fourth behind Samsung, Apple and Xiaomi. The company’s growth rates are particularly impressive: From January to March, Samsung sold 60.1 million smartphones, a decrease of 0.7 percent compared to the previous year. Apple’s sales even dropped by 9.6 percent to 50.1 million iPhones. Xiaomi sold 40.8 million devices (+33.8 percent). But Transsion overshadowed all with an 84.5 percent growth and 28.5 million devices sold. Even with potentially lower future growth rates, the global smartphone crown seems within reach for the company.
It’s remarkable that Transsion, which was founded as Tecno Mobile in 2006, grew to its current size without benefiting from its massive home market. Founder Zhu Zhaojiang made a farsighted decision at that time: He realized it would be challenging to gain a foothold in the fiercely competitive Chinese market, where many companies were ready to start their smartphone production. Both Huawei and Oppo were preparing to launch their first devices then. Xiaomi followed a few years later.
The situation then is somewhat reminiscent of today’s electric car manufacturers in China. Too many companies are trying to establish themselves in the home market, making it difficult to operate profitably. Zhu Zhaojiang took a different path: He left the Chinese smartphone market untouched and instead specialized in affordable devices for the African market.
In 2017, his company became the market leader on the continent for the first time and has since been known as the “smartphone king of Africa”. Since then, the market share in Africa has consistently been between 40 percent and 50 percent. Transsion has also been successfully expanding into the Middle East and South Asia, where it is a market leader in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Transsion has established factories in Ethiopia, India and Bangladesh to produce and supply products for local markets.
The company gains an advantage by offering devices tailored to the needs of African customers, such as smartphones with cameras optimized for darker skin tones. Another technological feature that is particularly popular in Africa and South Asia is the dual-SIM functionality.
This allows users to use two different SIM cards simultaneously, which is beneficial given the frequent network instability and varying tariff structures in these regions. Transsion has also invested in developing smartphones with longer battery life, which is crucial in areas where power outages are common and access to electricity can be limited.
In addition to hardware adaptations, Transsion has developed software solutions specifically for its markets. For instance, the Boomplay music app, tailored to the African market, offers local music content that caters to the users’ tastes. Similarly, the Scooper news app provides local and international news in a format relevant to local readers. Both apps have over 50 million monthly users.
Kai Mueller – Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet (ICT) Germany
Kai Mueller has been active in various human rights organizations for over 20 years. Since 2005, he has served as the Executive Director of the International Campaign for Tibet in Germany. He coordinates and directs advocacy projects at both national and international levels. As an expert witness, he informs the German Bundestag about Chinese human rights abuses. As a lobbyist, he advocates for the Tibetan people’s rights in various United Nations bodies.
Tenzyn Zoechbauer – Executive Director of the Tibet Initiative Germany e.V.
Tenzyn Zoechbauer, whose mother is Tibetan, was born in Vienna in 1991. She is frequently seen at protest events advocating for a self-determined Tibet and denouncing Chinese government influence while showing solidarity with civil society actors in China, such as the White Paper protests by young Chinese in December 2022. Zoechbauer’s grandmother fled Tibet in the early 1960s. Zoechbauer herself hopes to one day visit Tibet as a free country.
Glacier Kwong – Activist
Glacier Chung Ching Kwong became the face of the Hong Kong protest movement in Germany in 2019. Alongside prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong, she sought support at places like Berlin’s Humboldt University and the Federal Press Conference. Kwong now works as a lead analyst at the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, focusing on surveillance and digital resistance. She is a doctoral candidate in law at the University of Hamburg and a former spokesperson for Hong Kong’s internet rights group Keyboard Frontline.
Ray Wong – Chair of Freedom for Hong Kong e.V.
Ray Wong Toi-yeung is a democracy activist from Hong Kong and an advisor for the NGO Hong Kong Watch. In 2015, he founded the political group “Hong Kong Indigenous” in his hometown, which became one of the leading parties in Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. In 2016, Wong was imprisoned for his political activism and faced up to ten years in prison. He fled Hong Kong in 2017 and was granted asylum in Germany the following year. He currently lives and studies in Goettingen.
Nora Sausmikat – Head of China Desk Urgewald
Nora Sausmikat was a foreign student in China during the Tiananmen Square crackdown, an experience that deeply influenced her. She soon dedicated herself to political research on participation and memory culture in China. Sausmikat helped establish the China Program at the Asienhaus Foundation and developed an exchange program between European and Chinese NGOs. Since 2019, she has led the China Desk at the environmental and human rights organization Urgewald, based in Sassenberg, Westphalia.
Li Shuo – Director of the climate hub at the Asia society
Li Shuo is a senior policy advisor for Greenpeace East Asia, focusing on air pollution, energy policy, water and biodiversity. Li joined Greenpeace in 2011, one of the largest international NGOs in China. Educated in Nanjing and Washington, Li negotiates multilateral environmental agreements for the organization, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).
Sandra Schulze – Managing Director at Bildungsnetzwerk China gGmbH
As the new managing director of the Educational Network China, Sandra Schulze aims to increase China expertise in Germany, especially in schools. Previously, she was the Area Manager for China at Berlin Partner for Business and Technology. Schulze studied Chinese at Beijing Foreign Studies University and is an alumna of “Zukunftsbruecke – Chinese-German Young Professional Campus”. She lived in China for several years as a child.
Hanno Schedler – Consultant at the Society for Threatened Peoples (STP)
Hanno Schedler advocates for the rights of religious, linguistic and ethnic minorities. Since 2008, in the Department of Genocide Prevention and Responsibility to Protect at GfbV, he has focused on Chinese human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang. Schedler highlights the responsibilities of German companies at shareholder meetings and informs the Federal Press Conference about the situation of the Uyghurs. He studied political science, sociology and sinology in Trier and Rennes, France.
Haiyuer Kuerban – Director of the Berlin Office of the World Uyghur Congress
The 40-year-old gives a face to the tragic plight of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang through his political engagement. As the director of the Berlin office of the World Uyghur Congress, Kuerban coordinates the activities of about 30 organizations advocating for Uyghur rights. He conducts public relations and lobbying work for his people, who are silenced in China. Kuerban discusses human rights violations by the Chinese government with politicians and the media. Many of his close family members still live in Xinjiang and are subjected to Chinese repression, like millions of others.
Joachim Glatter – President of the German-Chinese Lawyers Association
As the president of the DCJV, Joachim Glatter promotes knowledge of Chinese law in Germany and German law in China, fostering academic exchange between lawyers from both countries. Glatter has 25 years of experience advising multinational and mid-sized companies on Chinese foreign investment and trade law, as well as arbitration in China. He is a listed mediator for the China International Economic and Trade Arbitration Commission (CIETAC) and the Shanghai International Arbitration Center (SHIAC). Until the end of 2014, he was a partner in several large international law firms.
Rap is a popular music genre in China that can convey social criticism between the lines. One of the latest examples is the song “Factory” by Zhang Fangzhao. The 27-year-old gained a wider audience through the talent show “The Rap of China” and in this song, he tells the story of his escape from his hometown of Jiaozuo in Henan Province. In recent years, the area has faced environmental pollution, mass layoffs and population outflows. The music video depicts the region in bleak colors but also celebrates the resilience of its residents. The song struck a chord on social media, with thousands of people sharing their experiences on platforms like Weibo about still being discriminated against in cities like Shanghai as country bumpkins from the provinces.
