The disparity between the amount of goods Germany buys in China and the goods it sells to China is growing. Germany’s trade deficit with China even reached a record high in 2022. This begs the question: How can political liberation from dependence be achieved under these conditions?
We expect policymakers to clearly articulate, uphold, and assert our values toward Beijing, but we do exactly the opposite of what might help them do so. Instead of less, we buy and consume more Chinese products. Obviously, the strategically sound consideration of keeping dependence on an autocratic system as low as possible to preserve our freedoms “is ultimately less important to Germans than the question of how much is left in their wallets at the end of the month,” concludes Frank Sieren.
Those who are concerned about the growing dependence on the People’s Republic may see a glimmer of hope in the EU Commission’s upcoming legislative initiative on safeguarding critical raw materials. Brussels plans an initiative based on four pillars: strategic priorities, monitoring and risk management, strengthening the value chain within the EU, and equal treatment regarding non-EU countries. Environmental and social standards are also to be strengthened, write Leonie Duengefeld and Amelie Richter.
It is a step in the right direction, but one that comes not a day too soon. The Commission has already brought forward the presentation of the draft several times so that it can already be discussed in early March. This, too, can be seen as a positive sign that key players in European politics have recognized the urgency of not increasing dependence on China even further.
In 2022, a decades-long trade trend reached a new peak: Germany imported more goods from China than ever before. Imports reached a record level of €195 billion. The value of goods purchased from China increased in one fell swoop by 37 percent, or around €50 billion, compared to the previous year. This is the estimate of Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI). “This increases the dependence on the Chinese procurement market,” the experts conclude.
This makes China Germany’s biggest trade partner for the seventh consecutive time. A short- or medium-term decoupling thus appears more illusory than ever. Rising inflation even amplifies this trend. The more difficult the economic situation and the higher the inflation rate, the more Germans demand low-priced goods. But many importers believe that China continues to offer the best mix of price and quality. For its large market, manufacturers can produce in large quantities and thus offer better prices worldwide.
At the same time, trade becomes more and more unbalanced, because China demands fewer foreign goods. The country’s trade surplus is rising at a rapid pace. Conversely, Germany has to cope with an ever higher trade deficit with China. Last year, the gap between imports and exports amounted to €88 billion, reports the GTAI. This is also a record.
However, the trade imbalance is not a phenomenon that only affects Germany. Even the United States, which actually explicitly sought to distance itself from China, continues to import enormous quantities of Chinese goods. One-third of all shipping containers enter the US from China.
This also corresponds to the overall picture of global trade. Measured in the national currency, the renminbi, China managed to increase its exports by more than seven percent in 2022 alone. Imports only went up by just over one percent. This is according to figures from China’s customs authority. For the first time, China’s global trade volume exceeded ¥40 trillion, or €5.5 trillion. Overall, China’s share of global exports has increased steeply over the past decades, while Germany’s share has decreased slightly.
The pandemic, when masks were in short supply for example, and the Ukraine war have actually increased awareness in Germany that supply dependencies can become a real risk. As a result, the German government currently focuses on a better global spread of procurement and sales markets in its various strategies. However, the statistics show no sign of decoupling.
But diversification takes a lot of time, after all. A free trade agreement with the South American trading area Mercosur, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz hopes to push forward during his trip to South America, would bring some relief. But the effect should not be overestimated. China contributes 18 percent to global GDP, while Mercosur as a whole only accounts for a good three percent. Trade between Mercosur and the EU accounts for about one-third of the EU’s trade with China. The trade volume between China and the EU exceeded the €300 billion mark for the first time last year.
Another comparison: China’s trade with the Mercosur countries is already over 60 percent larger than trade between the EU and Mercosur, even without a free trade agreement with China. Both regions also produce completely different products. Mercosur mainly provides food, meat, poultry, sugar and olive oil. China supplies electronics.
However, trade figures should be treated with caution nowadays. In recent years, all major economies have built up a strong production base in China. Germany in particular. The products that German companies manufacture locally for the Chinese market no longer appear in the trade statistics. At most, supplied special parts left traces there.
But either way, the development stands in stark contrast to the aspirations of German politicians and large groups of the German public for greater independence from China. Demand for low-priced Chinese goods will likely continue to rise this year. While the World Bank expects China to recover to growth of around five percent, it forecasts growth of only 0.5 percent for the USA and only 0.1 percent for Europe.
Especially in hard times, the trading partners hardly seem to be able to do without China. The overall goal of reducing dependencies seems ultimately less important to the Germans than the question of how much is left in their pockets at the end of the month.
Together with President Gabriel Boric, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a new raw materials partnership in Chile. The German government hopes for easier access to scarce but important minerals – and thereby also greater independence from China. After all, the supply of many critical raw materials is heavily concentrated in only a handful of countries. For lithium, which is required for the production of EV batteries, Chile is the EU’s largest supplier – ahead of the People’s Republic.
For magnesium, China continues to be the largest supplier country for the EU. According to the EU Commission, a good 93 percent comes from China, and for heavy rare earths even 98 percent. The pressure to reduce these dependencies is great. Consequently, expectations of EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is in charge of the planned EU legislative package on the supply of critical raw materials, are also growing.
Brussels is stepping up the pace: The EU has already brought forward the deadline for the Critical Raw Materials Act several times. The Commission plans to present the draft on March 8. “The Act will be a top priority for the Swedish presidency in the coming months,” announced Sweden’s Energy Minister Ebba Busch during a visit to the Kiruna mine, where a gigantic trove of rare earths was recently discovered.
The EU Commission plans an initiative built on four pillars: Defining strategic priorities, monitoring and risk management, strengthening the value chain within the EU, and focusing on equal treatment with non-EU countries. Environmental and social standards are also to be strengthened. The top priority remains supply security.
Peter Handley, head of the Energy Intensive Industries, Raw Materials and Hydrogen Unit in the responsible EU Directorate General, emphasizes: “Our goal is to ensure a resilient supply chain and improve our security of supply for the things we need for our green and digital transformation.”
The EU Commission wants to tackle several issues. In addition to the poor diversification of procurement sources, the lack of investment in projects in the EU, limited public approval, and social and environmental impacts of the issue are to be addressed.
A network of national agencies is supposed to share information and enable monitoring measures. This includes, for example, the development of early warning mechanisms, the implementation of stress tests of critical supply chains and the mapping of strategic mineral resources. The idea of setting up a raw materials agency is also on the table.
Strategically important projects in the EU and partner countries are to receive a special designation. “Together with our member states and partners, we apply a label to projects that are strategic for a certain critical raw material,” Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič previously announced in a Europe.Table interview. The EU would then assist with the respective feasibility studies and, in return, requires compliance with environmental and social standards.
In order to secure the necessary funds, Germany and France proposed the creation of a public-private investment fund for raw materials projects in an informal paper in the EU Council. The idea was also met with approval from the industry. The Commission also plans to simplify approvals for projects in the EU. However, civil society demands greater involvement in the preparations of the legislative package.
A sustainable level playing field is to be created across the entire EU single market:
An alliance of four non-governmental organizations, including the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and PowerShift, calls for an overall EU-wide target to reduce the material footprint. It demands that the Commission “not only responds to changes on the supply side but also actively act on the demand side.”
According to the Commission, the priorities and objectives of EU measures could be defined by identifying strategic critical raw materials. This year, the Commission will revise the list of critical raw materials. So far, it has not announced a deadline for this. The last version from 2020 lists 30 raw materials.
Until now, economic criteria have been used to determine how “critical” each raw material is. But environmental and human rights are also crucial in the mining process, says Tobias Kind-Rieper, Global Lead for Mining & Metals at WWF. “The issue of raw material security must go hand in hand with such a risk assessment. The list of critical raw materials would then look different.”
“We see the need for a directive not only on ‘critical raw materials,’” says Daniel Quantz of the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Metalle. “Rather, other metals such as copper and aluminum must also be considered by the Commission.” Leonie Duengefeld/Amelie Richter
According to China’s health authorities, virus samples have not yet revealed the existence of any unknown Covid mutations, despite a high number of cases. Covid strains BA.5.2 and BF.7 continue to dominate the infection activity in the country. Before the current wave, there were fears that high infection numbers would spawn a new variant.
However, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Monday that the situation continues to develop. The New Year holidays are ongoing, it said. Once the next semester begins at universities, infections could mix. Hospitals connected to the rapid reporting system were said to conduct intensive monitoring of case and death rates.
Meanwhile, there are some signs that infection levels are easing. Due to a return of New Year’s travel to 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels, Covid has spread strongly in rural areas. But by now, infections appear to have already swept through, matching the projections and estimates of epidemiologists. This means that the country now enjoys solid basic immunity.
Meanwhile, the end of Covid restrictions had a positive impact at the box office. During the New Year’s holidays, 129 million moviegoers flocked to China’s movie theaters. Only once before were more moviegoers recorded during the same period. Box office revenue totaled ¥6.76 billion, which is around €920 million. Chinese productions such as Zhang Yimou’s Full River Red, The Wandering Earth II or Boonie Bears: Guardian Code dominated the box office. fin/grz
The financial injections of its Chinese owner, James Zhou, are now followed by political appropriation for French first-division soccer club AJ Auxerre. On Sunday, the controversial Chinese ambassador, Lu Shaye, kicked off the match against SC Montpellier at the invitation of the club’s boss. Lu is considered to be one of China’s most aggressive wolf-warrior diplomats.
As ambassador in Paris, Lu has toughened his tone toward his critics. Among other things, he had the embassy press team call a French academic a “little thug” and a “crazy hyena”. Lu ignored a subsequent summon from the French Foreign Ministry. In a recent interview, he said he felt honored to be called a wolf warrior.
Investments in soccer clubs with money from authoritarian states such as China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates are occurring more and more frequently in Europe. AJ Auxerre has been in Chinese hands since 2016. At that time, the Chinese packaging group ORG Packaging took over the majority of shares in AJA Football SAOS, where AJ Auxerre runs its soccer club.
But Lu Shaye’s symbolic kickoff did not bring any luck to the second-last team in the Ligue 1 rankings. AJ Auxerre lost 0:2. grz
Sarah Eaton knows very well that certain encounters can change the course of entire lives. When she studied political science and Asian studies at a small university in her native Canada, she met Marilyn McCullough, an expert in modern Chinese history.
McCullough became Eaton’s mentor and significantly influenced her future academic endeavors. “I knew then that I wanted to connect my professional life to China in some way.” Eaton wrote her dissertation at the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science, but spent most of those years in Beijing, traveling around China. It was a shock when McCullough passed away early.
After graduating in 2011, Sarah Eaton accepted various professorships at universities in Canada, England, and Germany, eventually becoming chair of Transregional Chinese Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2019. “I worked hard for this dream, but in the end, it was also luck,” she says. “When I graduated, many China positions were created at universities. Now the academic job market is more difficult.” She hopes the German government’s expressed interest in China expertise will lead to more investment in related research fields. “We need that now more than ever.”
In her own research, Eaton compares China’s political, economic, and environmental developments with those of other countries. For her, approaching China from a transregional perspective means focusing on the defining junctures that link present-day China to other regions of the world. “It’s not always easy to make useful comparisons,” she says. “But it’s also problematic to treat China as if its modernization experience is unique.”
The Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN), which Eaton founded in 2021 together with her FU colleague Genia Kostka, can also be seen as such a juncture, at least within Berlin. “There are a lot of scholars working on different aspects of contemporary China at Berlin universities and research institutes, but until now we haven’t had much to do with each other.”
The BCCN aims to establish a community of China researchers that connects faculty, junior scholars, and students from different institutions. How have the first two years been so far? “Really well,” Eaton says. “I feel like a proud parent.” Recently, the BCCN received a grant from the Berlin University Alliance and the Ministry of Education.
When asked what she does to unwind outside all her projects, Eaton has to laugh. “I have four kids and a dog.” But there is one thing she does for herself: cook Chinese food. “I rarely impress my kids with it.” Svenja Napp
Chinese New Year is also celebrated outside China. Here, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien-Loong mix a traditional dish. “Yusheng” is a Cantonese sashimi salad that is said to bring wealth and good luck. Malaysia and Singapore each have their own recipe variation.
The disparity between the amount of goods Germany buys in China and the goods it sells to China is growing. Germany’s trade deficit with China even reached a record high in 2022. This begs the question: How can political liberation from dependence be achieved under these conditions?
We expect policymakers to clearly articulate, uphold, and assert our values toward Beijing, but we do exactly the opposite of what might help them do so. Instead of less, we buy and consume more Chinese products. Obviously, the strategically sound consideration of keeping dependence on an autocratic system as low as possible to preserve our freedoms “is ultimately less important to Germans than the question of how much is left in their wallets at the end of the month,” concludes Frank Sieren.
Those who are concerned about the growing dependence on the People’s Republic may see a glimmer of hope in the EU Commission’s upcoming legislative initiative on safeguarding critical raw materials. Brussels plans an initiative based on four pillars: strategic priorities, monitoring and risk management, strengthening the value chain within the EU, and equal treatment regarding non-EU countries. Environmental and social standards are also to be strengthened, write Leonie Duengefeld and Amelie Richter.
It is a step in the right direction, but one that comes not a day too soon. The Commission has already brought forward the presentation of the draft several times so that it can already be discussed in early March. This, too, can be seen as a positive sign that key players in European politics have recognized the urgency of not increasing dependence on China even further.
In 2022, a decades-long trade trend reached a new peak: Germany imported more goods from China than ever before. Imports reached a record level of €195 billion. The value of goods purchased from China increased in one fell swoop by 37 percent, or around €50 billion, compared to the previous year. This is the estimate of Germany Trade & Invest (GTAI). “This increases the dependence on the Chinese procurement market,” the experts conclude.
This makes China Germany’s biggest trade partner for the seventh consecutive time. A short- or medium-term decoupling thus appears more illusory than ever. Rising inflation even amplifies this trend. The more difficult the economic situation and the higher the inflation rate, the more Germans demand low-priced goods. But many importers believe that China continues to offer the best mix of price and quality. For its large market, manufacturers can produce in large quantities and thus offer better prices worldwide.
At the same time, trade becomes more and more unbalanced, because China demands fewer foreign goods. The country’s trade surplus is rising at a rapid pace. Conversely, Germany has to cope with an ever higher trade deficit with China. Last year, the gap between imports and exports amounted to €88 billion, reports the GTAI. This is also a record.
However, the trade imbalance is not a phenomenon that only affects Germany. Even the United States, which actually explicitly sought to distance itself from China, continues to import enormous quantities of Chinese goods. One-third of all shipping containers enter the US from China.
This also corresponds to the overall picture of global trade. Measured in the national currency, the renminbi, China managed to increase its exports by more than seven percent in 2022 alone. Imports only went up by just over one percent. This is according to figures from China’s customs authority. For the first time, China’s global trade volume exceeded ¥40 trillion, or €5.5 trillion. Overall, China’s share of global exports has increased steeply over the past decades, while Germany’s share has decreased slightly.
The pandemic, when masks were in short supply for example, and the Ukraine war have actually increased awareness in Germany that supply dependencies can become a real risk. As a result, the German government currently focuses on a better global spread of procurement and sales markets in its various strategies. However, the statistics show no sign of decoupling.
But diversification takes a lot of time, after all. A free trade agreement with the South American trading area Mercosur, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz hopes to push forward during his trip to South America, would bring some relief. But the effect should not be overestimated. China contributes 18 percent to global GDP, while Mercosur as a whole only accounts for a good three percent. Trade between Mercosur and the EU accounts for about one-third of the EU’s trade with China. The trade volume between China and the EU exceeded the €300 billion mark for the first time last year.
Another comparison: China’s trade with the Mercosur countries is already over 60 percent larger than trade between the EU and Mercosur, even without a free trade agreement with China. Both regions also produce completely different products. Mercosur mainly provides food, meat, poultry, sugar and olive oil. China supplies electronics.
However, trade figures should be treated with caution nowadays. In recent years, all major economies have built up a strong production base in China. Germany in particular. The products that German companies manufacture locally for the Chinese market no longer appear in the trade statistics. At most, supplied special parts left traces there.
But either way, the development stands in stark contrast to the aspirations of German politicians and large groups of the German public for greater independence from China. Demand for low-priced Chinese goods will likely continue to rise this year. While the World Bank expects China to recover to growth of around five percent, it forecasts growth of only 0.5 percent for the USA and only 0.1 percent for Europe.
Especially in hard times, the trading partners hardly seem to be able to do without China. The overall goal of reducing dependencies seems ultimately less important to the Germans than the question of how much is left in their pockets at the end of the month.
Together with President Gabriel Boric, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced a new raw materials partnership in Chile. The German government hopes for easier access to scarce but important minerals – and thereby also greater independence from China. After all, the supply of many critical raw materials is heavily concentrated in only a handful of countries. For lithium, which is required for the production of EV batteries, Chile is the EU’s largest supplier – ahead of the People’s Republic.
For magnesium, China continues to be the largest supplier country for the EU. According to the EU Commission, a good 93 percent comes from China, and for heavy rare earths even 98 percent. The pressure to reduce these dependencies is great. Consequently, expectations of EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton, who is in charge of the planned EU legislative package on the supply of critical raw materials, are also growing.
Brussels is stepping up the pace: The EU has already brought forward the deadline for the Critical Raw Materials Act several times. The Commission plans to present the draft on March 8. “The Act will be a top priority for the Swedish presidency in the coming months,” announced Sweden’s Energy Minister Ebba Busch during a visit to the Kiruna mine, where a gigantic trove of rare earths was recently discovered.
The EU Commission plans an initiative built on four pillars: Defining strategic priorities, monitoring and risk management, strengthening the value chain within the EU, and focusing on equal treatment with non-EU countries. Environmental and social standards are also to be strengthened. The top priority remains supply security.
Peter Handley, head of the Energy Intensive Industries, Raw Materials and Hydrogen Unit in the responsible EU Directorate General, emphasizes: “Our goal is to ensure a resilient supply chain and improve our security of supply for the things we need for our green and digital transformation.”
The EU Commission wants to tackle several issues. In addition to the poor diversification of procurement sources, the lack of investment in projects in the EU, limited public approval, and social and environmental impacts of the issue are to be addressed.
A network of national agencies is supposed to share information and enable monitoring measures. This includes, for example, the development of early warning mechanisms, the implementation of stress tests of critical supply chains and the mapping of strategic mineral resources. The idea of setting up a raw materials agency is also on the table.
Strategically important projects in the EU and partner countries are to receive a special designation. “Together with our member states and partners, we apply a label to projects that are strategic for a certain critical raw material,” Commission Vice President Maroš Šefčovič previously announced in a Europe.Table interview. The EU would then assist with the respective feasibility studies and, in return, requires compliance with environmental and social standards.
In order to secure the necessary funds, Germany and France proposed the creation of a public-private investment fund for raw materials projects in an informal paper in the EU Council. The idea was also met with approval from the industry. The Commission also plans to simplify approvals for projects in the EU. However, civil society demands greater involvement in the preparations of the legislative package.
A sustainable level playing field is to be created across the entire EU single market:
An alliance of four non-governmental organizations, including the European Environmental Bureau (EEB) and PowerShift, calls for an overall EU-wide target to reduce the material footprint. It demands that the Commission “not only responds to changes on the supply side but also actively act on the demand side.”
According to the Commission, the priorities and objectives of EU measures could be defined by identifying strategic critical raw materials. This year, the Commission will revise the list of critical raw materials. So far, it has not announced a deadline for this. The last version from 2020 lists 30 raw materials.
Until now, economic criteria have been used to determine how “critical” each raw material is. But environmental and human rights are also crucial in the mining process, says Tobias Kind-Rieper, Global Lead for Mining & Metals at WWF. “The issue of raw material security must go hand in hand with such a risk assessment. The list of critical raw materials would then look different.”
“We see the need for a directive not only on ‘critical raw materials,’” says Daniel Quantz of the Wirtschaftsvereinigung Metalle. “Rather, other metals such as copper and aluminum must also be considered by the Commission.” Leonie Duengefeld/Amelie Richter
According to China’s health authorities, virus samples have not yet revealed the existence of any unknown Covid mutations, despite a high number of cases. Covid strains BA.5.2 and BF.7 continue to dominate the infection activity in the country. Before the current wave, there were fears that high infection numbers would spawn a new variant.
However, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention warned on Monday that the situation continues to develop. The New Year holidays are ongoing, it said. Once the next semester begins at universities, infections could mix. Hospitals connected to the rapid reporting system were said to conduct intensive monitoring of case and death rates.
Meanwhile, there are some signs that infection levels are easing. Due to a return of New Year’s travel to 70 percent of pre-pandemic levels, Covid has spread strongly in rural areas. But by now, infections appear to have already swept through, matching the projections and estimates of epidemiologists. This means that the country now enjoys solid basic immunity.
Meanwhile, the end of Covid restrictions had a positive impact at the box office. During the New Year’s holidays, 129 million moviegoers flocked to China’s movie theaters. Only once before were more moviegoers recorded during the same period. Box office revenue totaled ¥6.76 billion, which is around €920 million. Chinese productions such as Zhang Yimou’s Full River Red, The Wandering Earth II or Boonie Bears: Guardian Code dominated the box office. fin/grz
The financial injections of its Chinese owner, James Zhou, are now followed by political appropriation for French first-division soccer club AJ Auxerre. On Sunday, the controversial Chinese ambassador, Lu Shaye, kicked off the match against SC Montpellier at the invitation of the club’s boss. Lu is considered to be one of China’s most aggressive wolf-warrior diplomats.
As ambassador in Paris, Lu has toughened his tone toward his critics. Among other things, he had the embassy press team call a French academic a “little thug” and a “crazy hyena”. Lu ignored a subsequent summon from the French Foreign Ministry. In a recent interview, he said he felt honored to be called a wolf warrior.
Investments in soccer clubs with money from authoritarian states such as China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates are occurring more and more frequently in Europe. AJ Auxerre has been in Chinese hands since 2016. At that time, the Chinese packaging group ORG Packaging took over the majority of shares in AJA Football SAOS, where AJ Auxerre runs its soccer club.
But Lu Shaye’s symbolic kickoff did not bring any luck to the second-last team in the Ligue 1 rankings. AJ Auxerre lost 0:2. grz
Sarah Eaton knows very well that certain encounters can change the course of entire lives. When she studied political science and Asian studies at a small university in her native Canada, she met Marilyn McCullough, an expert in modern Chinese history.
McCullough became Eaton’s mentor and significantly influenced her future academic endeavors. “I knew then that I wanted to connect my professional life to China in some way.” Eaton wrote her dissertation at the University of Toronto’s Department of Political Science, but spent most of those years in Beijing, traveling around China. It was a shock when McCullough passed away early.
After graduating in 2011, Sarah Eaton accepted various professorships at universities in Canada, England, and Germany, eventually becoming chair of Transregional Chinese Studies at Humboldt University in Berlin in 2019. “I worked hard for this dream, but in the end, it was also luck,” she says. “When I graduated, many China positions were created at universities. Now the academic job market is more difficult.” She hopes the German government’s expressed interest in China expertise will lead to more investment in related research fields. “We need that now more than ever.”
In her own research, Eaton compares China’s political, economic, and environmental developments with those of other countries. For her, approaching China from a transregional perspective means focusing on the defining junctures that link present-day China to other regions of the world. “It’s not always easy to make useful comparisons,” she says. “But it’s also problematic to treat China as if its modernization experience is unique.”
The Berlin Contemporary China Network (BCCN), which Eaton founded in 2021 together with her FU colleague Genia Kostka, can also be seen as such a juncture, at least within Berlin. “There are a lot of scholars working on different aspects of contemporary China at Berlin universities and research institutes, but until now we haven’t had much to do with each other.”
The BCCN aims to establish a community of China researchers that connects faculty, junior scholars, and students from different institutions. How have the first two years been so far? “Really well,” Eaton says. “I feel like a proud parent.” Recently, the BCCN received a grant from the Berlin University Alliance and the Ministry of Education.
When asked what she does to unwind outside all her projects, Eaton has to laugh. “I have four kids and a dog.” But there is one thing she does for herself: cook Chinese food. “I rarely impress my kids with it.” Svenja Napp
Chinese New Year is also celebrated outside China. Here, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien-Loong mix a traditional dish. “Yusheng” is a Cantonese sashimi salad that is said to bring wealth and good luck. Malaysia and Singapore each have their own recipe variation.
