The discussion about the need for China expertise when dealing with the autocratic government in Beijing should definitely also be held in France. President Macron showed last week how apparently little he knows about the mechanisms of the interplay between the party and state media in the People’s Republic.
Perhaps he actually believed that his open words on Europe’s relationship with the USA would win Beijing’s trust and thus give him more influence over Zhongnanhai. But in fact, his hosts turned him into a key witness of European lackeyship and turned him into a symbol of the EU’s divisions. The French president’s submission to this PR disaster was a disgrace to behold, and also harmed the democratic Taiwan in the process.
What is truly fatal about this is that China has been handed a wild card for its divide et impera strategy, dividing and conquering, which is certain to be played soon. After all, Macron’s charm offensive can also be seen as an affront to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. While she is challenging Beijing in the name of Europe, one of the most important players is turning away from the EU position. It is a safe bet that Beijing will use this interpretation to its advantage.
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk analyzes what went wrong during Macron’s visit from the perspective of a Europe striving for unity. And Felix Lee spoke with the democracy researcher Alexander Goerlach about it. He considers Beijing’s Ukraine rhetoric to be without substance in many respects. Sadly, this interview comes a week too late for Emmanuel Macron.
Just hours after a feel-good trip by Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping to southern China, the Chinese navy has launched a major naval drill around Taiwan. While several fleets trained to blockade the Taiwanese islands, Macron spoke in an interview that Europe will not follow “neither the US nor China” on Taiwan. It should go its own way and thus become the “third superpower”, the French president said in an interview with the newspaper Les Echos.
Macron thus at least contradicted the sentiment of Ursula von der Leyen’s assertive speech last week. Towards Xi, too, the EU Commission President called resorting to violence in order to change the status quo unacceptable. Instead of now also clearly backing Taiwan, Macron signaled indifference on this issue and marked it as a US power-political project. Unlike Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had clearly warned against an invasion of Taiwan, despite all the vagueness in his policy.
Between Saturday and Monday evening, several fleets had rehearsed encircling the whole of Taiwan and blocking shipping traffic. One of the fictitious targets of the operation was an attack on the main island by a carrier strike group. Beijing’s naval exercise was an explicit response to the meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles at the end of last week.
The People’s Liberation Army called the drill a “stern warning against separatist forces”. The fleets were deployed “to the north, south and east of Taiwan and the sea and airspace”. West of Taiwan, as is well known, is the Chinese mainland. So all directions are covered. Unlike last August, however, no missiles were fired over the Taiwanese core territory.
Although China was not so bold as to launch the military drill on Thursday or Friday, when both von der Leyen and Macron were present in Beijing. On Friday, Macron made a detour to the southern city of Guangzhou before returning to Paris. The trip with Xi is considered a special tribute to the French president. China is wooing him because he arrived with a business delegation and appeared generally charming and approachable. Macron played along and was duly delighted by the hospitality.
Xi presumably routinely used the opportunity to campaign for a French departure from cooperation with the USA and a turn toward China. Macron now accommodated to Xi in the interview by taking up two Chinese narratives at once:
If the EU cannot solve the crisis in Ukraine, how could it do anything for Taiwan, Macron asked fatalistically.
Macron’s words may sound appropriate in a European context and do not represent an entirely new position. Indeed, Europe is seeking a third, independent path. Xi, however, will chalk it up as a great success. The worst-case scenario for Chinese diplomacy and geostrategy is a firm US-European alliance. The ideal would be for Europe to unequivocally join China. But that will not happen. But nearly as good is a separation of the blocs, which China can exploit depending on the situation, especially since the Europeans are divided amongst themselves. So, within reason, Macron gave Xi what he wanted after the friendly visit.
In China, Macron’s words are logically interpreted as suggesting that the EU should stay out of the Taiwan issue. In fact, state media have translated Macron’s quotes in such a way that he said Europe should “not become a vassal” of the United States and not be drawn into the “confrontation between China and the US on Taiwan”. That would be the non-interference in internal affairs that China keeps demanding.
Macron made no further comment from Paris on the aggressive military drill that followed his visit. The EU, on the other hand, spoke out and expressed its “concern” about the large-scale military exercise.
In Berlin, Norbert Roettgen, the foreign policy expert of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), expressed outrage at Macron’s breaking with the EU line. “Macron has managed to turn his China trip, a PR coup for Xi, into a foreign policy disaster for Europe,” he wrote on Twitter. The French president would say “word for word what Xi wants to hear”. His message: China and Taiwan are not the Europeans’ problem, believes Roettgen.
The perception of the commitment to Taiwan as a mere power tool of the USA, which in the Chinese interpretation also resounded in Macron’s statements, was also found in an opinion piece in the People’s Liberation Army newspaper (PLA Daily, 解放军报) on Monday. The tenor was that the US security guarantee for Taiwan is worthless. In a sweeping statement, it also referred to the use of industrial decoupling as a geostrategic weapon. The US policy would only serve to incite the people of Taiwan against China, the military newspaper said. Events in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine would show that US promises were of no use to the respective countries and only destabilized them.
In the eyes of a large part of the audience in the People’s Republic, such comments seem credible. They make use of true elements and continue the narrative that the public has been familiar with from childhood in the state media. According to the official interpretation of the People’s Republic, the people of Taiwan want to join China, but they are oppressed by a US-controlled regime. Military intervention is labeled by the PLA Daily as “peacekeeping”.
“Sharp Sword” 利剑 has been the name of various Chinese military drills for years. As usual, snappy videos with heroic music appeared on China propaganda sites over the weekend, showing destroyers firing, planes veering off and sailors pacing. “The target of the strikes is the main island of Taiwan,” the People’s Liberation Army announced. For the first time, it said, they were directed at “key targets”. The Japanese air force observed continued take-offs and landings on the aircraft carrier Shandong.
A meeting between Taiwan’s president and a top US politician tends to strengthen the legitimacy of Taiwan’s democratic island republic as a separate state. Hence Beijing’s anger over President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with the third highest US official. China considers the island to be part of its own territory, although it has never been part of the People’s Republic. Under its own democratic administration, Taiwan has been developing in a politically and economically stable manner for decades.
Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing with 60 business leaders in tow, clearly playing the good cop. Ursula von der Leyen appeared more as a bad cop. Has the strategy of the French President and the President of the European Commission paid off?
No. China escalated the situation in the Taiwan Strait shortly after their departure. Although the visit of the European leaders focused primarily on Ukraine, it should not have escaped Xi Jinping’s attention that the Europeans see a parallel between Russia and Ukraine and the People’s Republic and Taiwan. If Xi escalates in Taiwan, he will hardly call on his friend Vladimir Putin to show restraint in Ukraine. So Macron and von der Leyen return from Beijing disappointed. At the same time, the old truism remains true that talking to each other is better than going for total confrontation and severing ties.
What exactly can such visits achieve in times of increasing bloc formation? Xi Jinping has recently made it clear on several occasions that he is on Putin’s side.
Von der Leyen’s speech on China a few days before her trip to Beijing found very clear words vis-à-vis Xi and warned of the risks of European companies becoming too dependent on China. Her concept of de-risking remains vague in substance, but becomes drastically topical with China’s Taiwan blockade: If Beijing isolates the democratic island like it is doing now, it will have tremendous repercussions for the global economy. The globally leading Taiwanese semiconductor company TSCM is not building a new plant in the southwestern US for nothing. The idea is to keep this technology out of Beijing’s hands in the event of a Chinese attack.
Has Xi made any changes on the Ukraine issue?
No, Beijing clearly remains on Russia’s side. This was evident from the tone of this so-called peace plan, and it was also clear from the behavior of the whole of last year and during the visit to Moscow. It is wishful thinking to hope that Xi Jinping could be the peacemaker who puts an end to Russia’s slaughter in Ukraine.
Macron seems to have extracted one promise from Xi. Diplomatic circles suggest that Xi could speak with President Zelenskiy soon.
That would be more than a year too late, should Xi Jinping really be serious about playing the role of mediator. Ever since the war began, Beijing has been urging both sides to sit down at the negotiating table. But Xi absolutely wants the Kremlin to win. Because if Putin loses, then a regime overthrow might loom and Beijing loses one of its most important partners. Russia can equip China with military technology that Beijing itself cannot yet produce. A democratic Russia would turn away from totalitarian China.
Wouldn’t a conversation between Xi and Zelenskiy nevertheless be an important step?
When I visit someone who has an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes, they cannot act as a mediator in the country where they are accused of having committed the crimes. The truth is that Xi is as genocidal against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as Putin is against the people in Ukraine. This makes them kindred spirits. My impression is that Beijing and Moscow are currently playing for time. Both leaders know that next year there will be an election in the US and that support for Ukraine could then begin to crumble in the free world. A return of Donald Trump or even a DeSantis as US president would reshuffle the cards.
Nevertheless, China’s peace plan is currently the only initiative. Nothing is coming from the West at the moment.
No, what Beijing has presented is not an initiative. And Russia does not want to negotiate. After the Macron-von-der-Leyen visit, the leadership in Moscow has already prophylactically declared that Beijing would achieve nothing with negotiations. The situation in Ukraine is too complex for China, a government spokesperson said.
Von der Leyen threatens consequences for Beijing if China supplies Russia with weapons. Is that helpful?
Von der Leyen is doing no more than taking up the current legal situation. And it expressly prohibits the supply of weapons to a country that attacks, or has attacked, the sovereignty of another nation. China has not condemned Russia’s violation of international law against Ukraine. Since Beijing does not feel bound by the minimum consensus of the international community, Europe must make clear where its red lines are.
China may already be supplying the Russians.
The leadership in Beijing could have sent weapons long ago if they had really wanted to. At the moment, I see no overarching reason why this should happen all of a sudden. China is acting, as is also clear in the case of Taiwan, a little below the threshold of a real entry into the war, so as not to be dragged into one with the free world. Xi will also keep this strategy in Ukraine.
During the visit of Macron and von der Leyen to Beijing, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy. At first, it seemed as if Beijing would hold back, but on the Easter weekend, the People’s Liberation Army encircled Taiwan. Does the leadership in Beijing not care what the Europeans think about them?
A naval blockade could inflict considerable damage on Taiwan. The island only has energy reserves for fourteen days. A few weeks ago, Chinese fishing boats cut the internet cables of the Matsu Islands, which belong to Taiwan. Beijing can isolate the island without firing a single shot. If this strategy continues, it will be difficult for the US to react. Because if they fired on the Chinese navy ships to free Taiwan from Beijing’s stranglehold, a world war would break out. The Taiwanese army would have to launch a liberation strike. But if China then were to bomb the island, that too would lead to the U.S. and Japan entering the war. Hopefully, Macron and von der Leyen have made it clear to Xi that he will lose the European market entirely if he resorts to this step.
Alexander Goerlach is a democracy scholar and expert on geopolitics at New York University. His most recent book, “Alarmstufe Rot: Wie Chinas aggressive Außenpolitik im Westpazifik in einen globalen Krieg führt” (Code Red: How China’s aggressive foreign policy in the Western Pacific is leading to a global war), was published in German by Hoffmann & Campe.
Duck sweet and sour as her favorite dish and the wish to be able to read the characters – that’s how Cora Jungbluth, Senior Expert for China and Asia Pacific at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, describes the humble beginnings of her interest in China. But they were enough. In 1999, Jungbluth enrolled for a master’s degree in sinology and economics in her hometown of Heidelberg. Sinology was still a niche subject at the time, but in combination with economics, it seemed even more exciting to her. Jungbluth saw potential – and she was proven right.
Her Master’s degree was followed in 2006 by another two economics semesters in Chinese at the renowned Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she honed the language skills she acquired in Heidelberg and Shanghai and gained a Chinese view of economic teaching and processes. This also gave rise to the idea for her later doctoral thesis, which remains a core topic of her work to this day: The internationalization process of Chinese companies.
In the mid-2000s, other China experts still considered this field of research utopian in parts, but Jungbluth was not swayed: Her 2011 dissertation anticipated the rapid development of Chinese direct investment, which only came into the spotlight of the broader German public in 2016 with the takeover of robot manufacturer KUKA – and has continued to gain importance to this day in light of the increasing economic rivalry with China.
In the meantime, Jungbluth has been working at the Bertelsmann Stiftung for almost eleven years, where she has already collaborated on various projects – including on Chinese direct investment and international free trade agreements. She is currently part of the “Sovereign Europe” project, which examines Europe’s critical dependencies and aims to identify action strategies. Jungbluth’s focus: China.
“A critical view of China is definitely necessary in view of economic dependencies and a lack of reciprocity,” says the expert, “but we must make sure that our view of China does not narrow too much.” With this, she also refers to Ursula von der Leyen, who also made it clear in her speech on the EU’s China policy at the end of March that a large part of trade with China is “un-risky”.
Making the right distinction is, of course, very difficult, Jungbluth explains. Because, among other things, the Communist Party has further expanded its influence on Chinese private companies in recent years. “Nevertheless, we have to manage to reach a healthy mix.” After all, Jungbluth says, China has much more to offer besides the official government side: people, research and development, culture, literature, and many other facets.
For instance, Jungbluth has kept her love for Chinese cuisine all these years, although she now prefers more authentic dishes than in the past. Her current favorites are hearty classics from Chinese cuisine, including gongbao chicken (宫保鸡丁), a vegetable mix of potatoes, peppers and eggplant (地三鲜), and tofu in a crispy coating (脆皮豆腐). Clemens Ruben
The Japanese have cherry blossoms. The people of Qingdao, on the other hand, are proud of their pear trees. Wearing traditional Han Dynasty clothing, they are currently celebrating the pear blossom – even if it doesn’t shimmer quite as pink as the Japanese ornamental cherry.
The discussion about the need for China expertise when dealing with the autocratic government in Beijing should definitely also be held in France. President Macron showed last week how apparently little he knows about the mechanisms of the interplay between the party and state media in the People’s Republic.
Perhaps he actually believed that his open words on Europe’s relationship with the USA would win Beijing’s trust and thus give him more influence over Zhongnanhai. But in fact, his hosts turned him into a key witness of European lackeyship and turned him into a symbol of the EU’s divisions. The French president’s submission to this PR disaster was a disgrace to behold, and also harmed the democratic Taiwan in the process.
What is truly fatal about this is that China has been handed a wild card for its divide et impera strategy, dividing and conquering, which is certain to be played soon. After all, Macron’s charm offensive can also be seen as an affront to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. While she is challenging Beijing in the name of Europe, one of the most important players is turning away from the EU position. It is a safe bet that Beijing will use this interpretation to its advantage.
Finn Mayer-Kuckuk analyzes what went wrong during Macron’s visit from the perspective of a Europe striving for unity. And Felix Lee spoke with the democracy researcher Alexander Goerlach about it. He considers Beijing’s Ukraine rhetoric to be without substance in many respects. Sadly, this interview comes a week too late for Emmanuel Macron.
Just hours after a feel-good trip by Emmanuel Macron and Xi Jinping to southern China, the Chinese navy has launched a major naval drill around Taiwan. While several fleets trained to blockade the Taiwanese islands, Macron spoke in an interview that Europe will not follow “neither the US nor China” on Taiwan. It should go its own way and thus become the “third superpower”, the French president said in an interview with the newspaper Les Echos.
Macron thus at least contradicted the sentiment of Ursula von der Leyen’s assertive speech last week. Towards Xi, too, the EU Commission President called resorting to violence in order to change the status quo unacceptable. Instead of now also clearly backing Taiwan, Macron signaled indifference on this issue and marked it as a US power-political project. Unlike Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had clearly warned against an invasion of Taiwan, despite all the vagueness in his policy.
Between Saturday and Monday evening, several fleets had rehearsed encircling the whole of Taiwan and blocking shipping traffic. One of the fictitious targets of the operation was an attack on the main island by a carrier strike group. Beijing’s naval exercise was an explicit response to the meeting between Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen and US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles at the end of last week.
The People’s Liberation Army called the drill a “stern warning against separatist forces”. The fleets were deployed “to the north, south and east of Taiwan and the sea and airspace”. West of Taiwan, as is well known, is the Chinese mainland. So all directions are covered. Unlike last August, however, no missiles were fired over the Taiwanese core territory.
Although China was not so bold as to launch the military drill on Thursday or Friday, when both von der Leyen and Macron were present in Beijing. On Friday, Macron made a detour to the southern city of Guangzhou before returning to Paris. The trip with Xi is considered a special tribute to the French president. China is wooing him because he arrived with a business delegation and appeared generally charming and approachable. Macron played along and was duly delighted by the hospitality.
Xi presumably routinely used the opportunity to campaign for a French departure from cooperation with the USA and a turn toward China. Macron now accommodated to Xi in the interview by taking up two Chinese narratives at once:
If the EU cannot solve the crisis in Ukraine, how could it do anything for Taiwan, Macron asked fatalistically.
Macron’s words may sound appropriate in a European context and do not represent an entirely new position. Indeed, Europe is seeking a third, independent path. Xi, however, will chalk it up as a great success. The worst-case scenario for Chinese diplomacy and geostrategy is a firm US-European alliance. The ideal would be for Europe to unequivocally join China. But that will not happen. But nearly as good is a separation of the blocs, which China can exploit depending on the situation, especially since the Europeans are divided amongst themselves. So, within reason, Macron gave Xi what he wanted after the friendly visit.
In China, Macron’s words are logically interpreted as suggesting that the EU should stay out of the Taiwan issue. In fact, state media have translated Macron’s quotes in such a way that he said Europe should “not become a vassal” of the United States and not be drawn into the “confrontation between China and the US on Taiwan”. That would be the non-interference in internal affairs that China keeps demanding.
Macron made no further comment from Paris on the aggressive military drill that followed his visit. The EU, on the other hand, spoke out and expressed its “concern” about the large-scale military exercise.
In Berlin, Norbert Roettgen, the foreign policy expert of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), expressed outrage at Macron’s breaking with the EU line. “Macron has managed to turn his China trip, a PR coup for Xi, into a foreign policy disaster for Europe,” he wrote on Twitter. The French president would say “word for word what Xi wants to hear”. His message: China and Taiwan are not the Europeans’ problem, believes Roettgen.
The perception of the commitment to Taiwan as a mere power tool of the USA, which in the Chinese interpretation also resounded in Macron’s statements, was also found in an opinion piece in the People’s Liberation Army newspaper (PLA Daily, 解放军报) on Monday. The tenor was that the US security guarantee for Taiwan is worthless. In a sweeping statement, it also referred to the use of industrial decoupling as a geostrategic weapon. The US policy would only serve to incite the people of Taiwan against China, the military newspaper said. Events in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine would show that US promises were of no use to the respective countries and only destabilized them.
In the eyes of a large part of the audience in the People’s Republic, such comments seem credible. They make use of true elements and continue the narrative that the public has been familiar with from childhood in the state media. According to the official interpretation of the People’s Republic, the people of Taiwan want to join China, but they are oppressed by a US-controlled regime. Military intervention is labeled by the PLA Daily as “peacekeeping”.
“Sharp Sword” 利剑 has been the name of various Chinese military drills for years. As usual, snappy videos with heroic music appeared on China propaganda sites over the weekend, showing destroyers firing, planes veering off and sailors pacing. “The target of the strikes is the main island of Taiwan,” the People’s Liberation Army announced. For the first time, it said, they were directed at “key targets”. The Japanese air force observed continued take-offs and landings on the aircraft carrier Shandong.
A meeting between Taiwan’s president and a top US politician tends to strengthen the legitimacy of Taiwan’s democratic island republic as a separate state. Hence Beijing’s anger over President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with the third highest US official. China considers the island to be part of its own territory, although it has never been part of the People’s Republic. Under its own democratic administration, Taiwan has been developing in a politically and economically stable manner for decades.
Emmanuel Macron visited Beijing with 60 business leaders in tow, clearly playing the good cop. Ursula von der Leyen appeared more as a bad cop. Has the strategy of the French President and the President of the European Commission paid off?
No. China escalated the situation in the Taiwan Strait shortly after their departure. Although the visit of the European leaders focused primarily on Ukraine, it should not have escaped Xi Jinping’s attention that the Europeans see a parallel between Russia and Ukraine and the People’s Republic and Taiwan. If Xi escalates in Taiwan, he will hardly call on his friend Vladimir Putin to show restraint in Ukraine. So Macron and von der Leyen return from Beijing disappointed. At the same time, the old truism remains true that talking to each other is better than going for total confrontation and severing ties.
What exactly can such visits achieve in times of increasing bloc formation? Xi Jinping has recently made it clear on several occasions that he is on Putin’s side.
Von der Leyen’s speech on China a few days before her trip to Beijing found very clear words vis-à-vis Xi and warned of the risks of European companies becoming too dependent on China. Her concept of de-risking remains vague in substance, but becomes drastically topical with China’s Taiwan blockade: If Beijing isolates the democratic island like it is doing now, it will have tremendous repercussions for the global economy. The globally leading Taiwanese semiconductor company TSCM is not building a new plant in the southwestern US for nothing. The idea is to keep this technology out of Beijing’s hands in the event of a Chinese attack.
Has Xi made any changes on the Ukraine issue?
No, Beijing clearly remains on Russia’s side. This was evident from the tone of this so-called peace plan, and it was also clear from the behavior of the whole of last year and during the visit to Moscow. It is wishful thinking to hope that Xi Jinping could be the peacemaker who puts an end to Russia’s slaughter in Ukraine.
Macron seems to have extracted one promise from Xi. Diplomatic circles suggest that Xi could speak with President Zelenskiy soon.
That would be more than a year too late, should Xi Jinping really be serious about playing the role of mediator. Ever since the war began, Beijing has been urging both sides to sit down at the negotiating table. But Xi absolutely wants the Kremlin to win. Because if Putin loses, then a regime overthrow might loom and Beijing loses one of its most important partners. Russia can equip China with military technology that Beijing itself cannot yet produce. A democratic Russia would turn away from totalitarian China.
Wouldn’t a conversation between Xi and Zelenskiy nevertheless be an important step?
When I visit someone who has an international arrest warrant for alleged war crimes, they cannot act as a mediator in the country where they are accused of having committed the crimes. The truth is that Xi is as genocidal against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang as Putin is against the people in Ukraine. This makes them kindred spirits. My impression is that Beijing and Moscow are currently playing for time. Both leaders know that next year there will be an election in the US and that support for Ukraine could then begin to crumble in the free world. A return of Donald Trump or even a DeSantis as US president would reshuffle the cards.
Nevertheless, China’s peace plan is currently the only initiative. Nothing is coming from the West at the moment.
No, what Beijing has presented is not an initiative. And Russia does not want to negotiate. After the Macron-von-der-Leyen visit, the leadership in Moscow has already prophylactically declared that Beijing would achieve nothing with negotiations. The situation in Ukraine is too complex for China, a government spokesperson said.
Von der Leyen threatens consequences for Beijing if China supplies Russia with weapons. Is that helpful?
Von der Leyen is doing no more than taking up the current legal situation. And it expressly prohibits the supply of weapons to a country that attacks, or has attacked, the sovereignty of another nation. China has not condemned Russia’s violation of international law against Ukraine. Since Beijing does not feel bound by the minimum consensus of the international community, Europe must make clear where its red lines are.
China may already be supplying the Russians.
The leadership in Beijing could have sent weapons long ago if they had really wanted to. At the moment, I see no overarching reason why this should happen all of a sudden. China is acting, as is also clear in the case of Taiwan, a little below the threshold of a real entry into the war, so as not to be dragged into one with the free world. Xi will also keep this strategy in Ukraine.
During the visit of Macron and von der Leyen to Beijing, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen met with the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy. At first, it seemed as if Beijing would hold back, but on the Easter weekend, the People’s Liberation Army encircled Taiwan. Does the leadership in Beijing not care what the Europeans think about them?
A naval blockade could inflict considerable damage on Taiwan. The island only has energy reserves for fourteen days. A few weeks ago, Chinese fishing boats cut the internet cables of the Matsu Islands, which belong to Taiwan. Beijing can isolate the island without firing a single shot. If this strategy continues, it will be difficult for the US to react. Because if they fired on the Chinese navy ships to free Taiwan from Beijing’s stranglehold, a world war would break out. The Taiwanese army would have to launch a liberation strike. But if China then were to bomb the island, that too would lead to the U.S. and Japan entering the war. Hopefully, Macron and von der Leyen have made it clear to Xi that he will lose the European market entirely if he resorts to this step.
Alexander Goerlach is a democracy scholar and expert on geopolitics at New York University. His most recent book, “Alarmstufe Rot: Wie Chinas aggressive Außenpolitik im Westpazifik in einen globalen Krieg führt” (Code Red: How China’s aggressive foreign policy in the Western Pacific is leading to a global war), was published in German by Hoffmann & Campe.
Duck sweet and sour as her favorite dish and the wish to be able to read the characters – that’s how Cora Jungbluth, Senior Expert for China and Asia Pacific at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, describes the humble beginnings of her interest in China. But they were enough. In 1999, Jungbluth enrolled for a master’s degree in sinology and economics in her hometown of Heidelberg. Sinology was still a niche subject at the time, but in combination with economics, it seemed even more exciting to her. Jungbluth saw potential – and she was proven right.
Her Master’s degree was followed in 2006 by another two economics semesters in Chinese at the renowned Tsinghua University in Beijing, where she honed the language skills she acquired in Heidelberg and Shanghai and gained a Chinese view of economic teaching and processes. This also gave rise to the idea for her later doctoral thesis, which remains a core topic of her work to this day: The internationalization process of Chinese companies.
In the mid-2000s, other China experts still considered this field of research utopian in parts, but Jungbluth was not swayed: Her 2011 dissertation anticipated the rapid development of Chinese direct investment, which only came into the spotlight of the broader German public in 2016 with the takeover of robot manufacturer KUKA – and has continued to gain importance to this day in light of the increasing economic rivalry with China.
In the meantime, Jungbluth has been working at the Bertelsmann Stiftung for almost eleven years, where she has already collaborated on various projects – including on Chinese direct investment and international free trade agreements. She is currently part of the “Sovereign Europe” project, which examines Europe’s critical dependencies and aims to identify action strategies. Jungbluth’s focus: China.
“A critical view of China is definitely necessary in view of economic dependencies and a lack of reciprocity,” says the expert, “but we must make sure that our view of China does not narrow too much.” With this, she also refers to Ursula von der Leyen, who also made it clear in her speech on the EU’s China policy at the end of March that a large part of trade with China is “un-risky”.
Making the right distinction is, of course, very difficult, Jungbluth explains. Because, among other things, the Communist Party has further expanded its influence on Chinese private companies in recent years. “Nevertheless, we have to manage to reach a healthy mix.” After all, Jungbluth says, China has much more to offer besides the official government side: people, research and development, culture, literature, and many other facets.
For instance, Jungbluth has kept her love for Chinese cuisine all these years, although she now prefers more authentic dishes than in the past. Her current favorites are hearty classics from Chinese cuisine, including gongbao chicken (宫保鸡丁), a vegetable mix of potatoes, peppers and eggplant (地三鲜), and tofu in a crispy coating (脆皮豆腐). Clemens Ruben
The Japanese have cherry blossoms. The people of Qingdao, on the other hand, are proud of their pear trees. Wearing traditional Han Dynasty clothing, they are currently celebrating the pear blossom – even if it doesn’t shimmer quite as pink as the Japanese ornamental cherry.
