The long-awaited National Security Strategy of the German Government is here. On Wednesday, the traffic light coalition ministers presented it – in German, English and French. Japanese and Polish versions are said to follow soon. And what about a version in Chinese? There will be one. One day.
Overall, the direct references to China are extremely limited – even though the People’s Republic has long been seen by German authorities as a significant security risk. But a separate China strategy is said to be coming “soon”, as emphasized by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the presentation. Or is the federal government just trying not to spoil the mood? After all, German-Chinese government consultations will take place in Berlin next week. And they wouldn’t want to upset the most important trading partner shortly before that.
Today, Xi Jinping celebrates his 70th birthday. From a traditional Chinese perspective, this is not a reason to celebrate. In Chinese, the word for 70 includes the word for decade (shi). And with a southern Chinese accent, it sounds similar to the word for death (si). Therefore, in old age, it is preferable to celebrate the year that includes the number 9 because 9 (jiu) sounds the same as “eternal” in Chinese.
Michael Radunski analyzes why even with regard to Xi, this is not a reason to celebrate. Because eternal refers to Xi’s party leadership and presidency. And these are not good prospects for China and the rest of the world.
Unsurprisingly, the new strategy identifies “today’s Russia” as the “greatest threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area for the foreseeable future. In the long term, however, the relationship with China appears to be more significant, especially in view of the commitment to a multipolar world.
At the joint press conference, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) tried to sum up the attitude toward the People’s Republic: “The US is a value partner, China is a trade partner, but a value rival.” The paper has 74 pages. On China, however, the strategy remains vague and contradictory, as is currently customary. It emphasizes dangers, weighted equally with indispensable partnership.
To this end, the government retreats to the formula of China as a “partner, competitor and systemic rival,” which is currently perceived as politically safe. “We see that the elements of rivalry and competition have increased in recent years, but at the same time China remains a partner without whom many of the most pressing global challenges cannot be resolved,” the overview says.
Further on, on page 23, this approach is elaborated. The national strategy on China formulates the following warnings:
So far, so right. Anyone hoping for an answer to the question of how to respond to the tricky challenge of China will be disappointed by the paper. The German government may be saving this for its China strategy, which could be published at the beginning of July, according to reports.
The argument that a more specific China strategy should be derived from the more general overall strategy only works to a limited extent in this document. The dilemma of a dominant trading partner that is becoming increasingly alienated from Germany in terms of its willingness to engage in dialogue and its practiced values is discussed here, above all with regard to Russia.
The tough decisions on China have thus been postponed again. Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressly emphasized that he was aiming for a “balance”. German-Chinese government consultations will be held in Berlin next week.
Numerous paragraphs of the paper, however, refer to issues where China is the biggest headache for German policymakers. “In general, we must end or at least reduce unilateral dependencies in critical areas, especially through diversification,” it says. Commodity projects are to be targeted together with the business community. For example, there should be government incentives for companies to build up reserves of critical raw materials to compensate for supply disruptions.
In general, international economic and financial relations are to be checked for unilateral dependencies because this has a security policy dimension. But these generalized passages do not answer the question of how the economy should diversify away from the largest market, largest production location and largest supplier without replacement.
The subject of large parts of the paper is the material equipment of the security organs and their European coordination. The approach of “integrated security,” which underlies the National Security Strategy, is intended to go beyond the previous focus on armed forces and diplomacy but also to look at internal security, cyber threats, the effects of economic policy and climate change.
“Bringing all strands of policy” together, however, must succeed without additional funding for the time being, in the view of the traffic light coalition: “In view of the considerable current demands on our public budgets, we are striving to manage the tasks of this strategy without placing an additional burden on the federal budget as a whole.” Lindner rejects the target of two percent of economic output for the defense budget as “not feasible”.
The guidelines of the new strategy under the slogans “Robust. Resilient. Sustainable.” essentially summarize the government’s previous efforts but hardly provide for any fundamentally new approaches. There is no provision for a national security council, as was repeatedly called for in the debate on this strategy, including by the coalition.
Both Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (The Greens) and Scholz stressed that the German government’s work in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine showed that the government apparatus was capable of acting and that no new body needed to be established. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk/Thomas Wiegold
There is currently a debate in China about raising the retirement age. Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, recently announced: “People approaching retirement age will have to delay retirement by a few months.” Currently, men in China retire at age 60 and women at age 55. China’s President Xi Jinping (习近平) turns 70 this Thursday. So it would be high time for him to retire.
But as if Jin Weigang had the same thought, he added in an interview with the Global Times newspaper: “The most important feature of the reform is that people can decide for themselves when they want to retire, depending on their circumstances and conditions.” Xi Jinping’s decision is clear. To that end, he has even had the 1982 Chinese constitution’s term limit, and thus the age limit for the office of president, lifted.
Xi Jinping began his third term as president of China this year. And it doesn’t have to stop there. Theoretically, he can rule for life. A circumstance that politicians and legal experts actually wanted to prevent in the 1982 constitution.
With Mao’s reign in mind, they feared that a lifetime in office would again lead to arbitrariness and tyranny, especially in a one-party state. “If someone stays in office for 15 years, the people won’t dare express their opinions to him,” said Fang Yi, one of the drafters of that constitution.
And not only the people. In the current Politburo, at the latest, Xi is surrounded only by loyal cadres. Since then, even in the closest leadership circle, Xi has only been told what he wants to say, critics fear.
As evidence of how far Xi was disconnected from reality, some cite China’s strict zero-Covid policy. With all his might, Xi had rejected foreign mRNA vaccines, preferring to send millions of people into months-long lockdowns. Only when discontent broke out on the streets of several metropolises did Xi relent and have all restrictions lifted.
The problem is obvious: The more power a person has, the more error-prone the system becomes. And the more difficult it is to correct mistakes. Xi is still succeeding. But the next question immediately arises.
Only he himself knows for sure. A glance at his great rival in Washington makes him seem almost youthful: US President Joe Biden is 80 years old, while his predecessor and possible challenger Donald Trump is 76. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Xi will make his retirement dependent on the age of his counterparts.
Rather, it would be up to Xi himself to build a successor. Deng Xiaoping once installed Jiang Zemin. He, in turn, handed over the leadership to Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao in an orderly fashion. Even when bitter trench warfare arose again in the CP, it was possible to agree on a candidate in due time after two terms in office: Xi Jinping was considered at the time to be a compromise who would not hurt anyone. Things turned out differently. And Xi himself has not yet chosen a successor. Last October, he was confirmed as general secretary of the Communist Party for another five years at the party congress. Why is Xi doing this?
One theory is that Xi simply doesn’t trust anyone else to do the job. His mission manifests itself in the ideas of the “Chinese Dream” (中国梦) and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (中华民族伟大复兴). Xi sees both of these in jeopardy. China is currently facing huge problems: weak economic growth, real estate bubble, indebted provinces. In addition, youth unemployment is at record levels. China’s society is also shrinking and getting older.
In terms of foreign policy, the situation is hardly any better: The competition with the US is getting tougher and tougher, in Europe China’s annoyance is spreading, and neighboring countries are increasingly concerned about China’s strength. And the list could be continued with topics such as power shortages, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia and the Belt and Road Initiative.
In such a situation, it would be irresponsible from Xi’s point of view to send the CP into a delicate transition process. So he has to do it himself, as China’s COE – Chairman Of Everything. Xi not only heads the party, the state and the military but also leads countless other leadership groups: on reform policy, the economy and finance, Hong Kong and Macao, national security, the modernization of the military or cyber security. In short, Xi is “chairman of everything”.
Another theory is that Xi cannot resign because, otherwise, he would have to fear for his own fate. After all, to become so powerful in the first place, Xi had to eliminate countless rivals along the way. Former Vice Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun, ex-security czar Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai are only the most famous names on a long list.
Especially under the pretext of “fighting corruption” many were literally put through the wringer. The “tigers” as well as the “flies”, the large as well as the rather small cadres. In just four years, more than 1.3 million officials and civil servants fell into the clutches of the all-powerful Central Disciplinary Commission. Many of them, their families and their networks are now waiting for their chance to take revenge.
Xi had to experience in his own family how quickly fate can turn: His father, Xi Zhongxun (习仲勋), was a revolutionary of the first hour and deputy prime minister of China – until Mao suddenly dropped his close confidant in 1962.
One way out for Xi would be to build a strong successor. But even if Xi were to find someone he trusted to lead China, it would be an extremely difficult balancing act: Xi‘s successor would have to be strong enough to protect Xi from his opponents even in retirement. On the other hand, he should not be too strong either because few retired leaders have managed to accustom their egos to a life in the second row.
Even the often-praised Deng Xiaoping, who had the orderly two-term transition introduced, continued to pull the strings in the background as the “outstanding leader” until his death. Time and again, he interfered in current politics-whenever he thought his political legacy was in danger. In the case of Xi Jinping, that would probably be: always.
Renowned artist and designer Huang Yongyu has died. His family announced that he passed away on Wednesday afternoon. He was 99 years old. Huang is best known in China for designing stamps featuring the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. In January, he created stamps for the Year of the Rabbit (2023).
The request reached me last summer: I had published a photo showing me with Dr. Wang Huiyao, the founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG). Was I not aware that I had allowed myself to be photographed with a representative of the Chinese “United Front”?
What had happened? On the occasion of a European trip by Dr. Wang, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I had one of the few opportunities to meet a representative of a respected Chinese think tank in person – hosting a working breakfast in Berlin on the future of German-Chinese relations.
Kindly, I pointed out to the questioner, a young journalist from a major German newspaper, that Dr. Wang was a respected scholar and knowledgeable expert on Chinese foreign policy. I mentioned that the CCG cooperates with the Munich Security Conference and hosted a dinner there in February 2020, where even (the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, editor’s note) John Kerry was photographed with Dr. Wang. Unfortunately, it made no difference; the young man’s judgment was already fixed. I had become part of a Chinese “influence operation”.
This attribution was not new to me. In 2019, together with the former Vice President of the German Bundestag, Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich, I founded the “China-Bruecke” in Berlin. The idea that there could be a circle of personalities from business, science, culture and politics who, out of their own conviction – without any incentive from Chinese authorities – could advocate for more channels of dialogue and a more constructive approach to China already exceeded the imagination of many media representatives. It was entirely irrelevant that the China Bridge did not accept Chinese citizens or Chinese contributions: of course, it too was a Chinese “influence operation”.
Recently, I had the pleasure once again. In 2016, I was the patron of the founding of a Sino-German alliance of industrial cities, which aimed to establish a platform for professional exchange between municipal economic developers from Germany and China for investments in each other’s countries, on the initiative and with the support of the southern Chinese city of Foshan. Not entirely unsuccessful: More than 40 cities were won over for the project. The German Trade and Invest Agency (GTAI) and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s China Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA) served as advisory board members. But thanks to the renewed efforts of courageous journalists to protect Germany from “attempted infiltration”, I now know that this too was nothing more than an “influence operation”.
“Influence operations” everywhere. Since the publication of Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s book “Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World” 2020, the claim that China, guided by an invisible hand, is “undermining Western democracies” with various initiatives has become a guiding principle in much of the China reporting in our country.
Advocates for German-Chinese cooperation are defamed, and their reputation is damaged, as if it were about proving that our tabloid media can still compete with those that Heinrich Boell made the subject of his 1974 narrative, “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum”. And all of this is fueled by a journalistic ethos that believes it can compensate for lack of knowledge and expertise with the right “attitude”.
In the 2000s, I was a member of the state board of the German Journalists’ Association in Berlin for some time. At that time, it was the sponsor of the Berlin Journalist School and had many discussions about quality assurance in reporting. Reflection on one’s own journalistic actions and their consequences had a high priority in these discussions. Today, in a time of increasing ideology and polarization in our debates, where all kinds of conspiracy theories flourish, not much seems to be left of that.
The mantra of ubiquitous “infiltration” by China bears more than a resemblance to the “Deep State” murmurs of the “free thinkers”. However, its advocates are bidding farewell to a new, self-inflicted immaturity.
In the past, scaffolding was often made of bamboo. Nowadays, even in China, it is made of steel. Despite the ongoing real estate crisis, many cities are filled with these scaffolds. The construction boom in China continues. However, buyers don’t necessarily find the finished properties. Vacancy rates are reaching new records. That’s how the “Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics” works.
The long-awaited National Security Strategy of the German Government is here. On Wednesday, the traffic light coalition ministers presented it – in German, English and French. Japanese and Polish versions are said to follow soon. And what about a version in Chinese? There will be one. One day.
Overall, the direct references to China are extremely limited – even though the People’s Republic has long been seen by German authorities as a significant security risk. But a separate China strategy is said to be coming “soon”, as emphasized by Chancellor Olaf Scholz during the presentation. Or is the federal government just trying not to spoil the mood? After all, German-Chinese government consultations will take place in Berlin next week. And they wouldn’t want to upset the most important trading partner shortly before that.
Today, Xi Jinping celebrates his 70th birthday. From a traditional Chinese perspective, this is not a reason to celebrate. In Chinese, the word for 70 includes the word for decade (shi). And with a southern Chinese accent, it sounds similar to the word for death (si). Therefore, in old age, it is preferable to celebrate the year that includes the number 9 because 9 (jiu) sounds the same as “eternal” in Chinese.
Michael Radunski analyzes why even with regard to Xi, this is not a reason to celebrate. Because eternal refers to Xi’s party leadership and presidency. And these are not good prospects for China and the rest of the world.
Unsurprisingly, the new strategy identifies “today’s Russia” as the “greatest threat to peace and security in the Euro-Atlantic area for the foreseeable future. In the long term, however, the relationship with China appears to be more significant, especially in view of the commitment to a multipolar world.
At the joint press conference, Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) tried to sum up the attitude toward the People’s Republic: “The US is a value partner, China is a trade partner, but a value rival.” The paper has 74 pages. On China, however, the strategy remains vague and contradictory, as is currently customary. It emphasizes dangers, weighted equally with indispensable partnership.
To this end, the government retreats to the formula of China as a “partner, competitor and systemic rival,” which is currently perceived as politically safe. “We see that the elements of rivalry and competition have increased in recent years, but at the same time China remains a partner without whom many of the most pressing global challenges cannot be resolved,” the overview says.
Further on, on page 23, this approach is elaborated. The national strategy on China formulates the following warnings:
So far, so right. Anyone hoping for an answer to the question of how to respond to the tricky challenge of China will be disappointed by the paper. The German government may be saving this for its China strategy, which could be published at the beginning of July, according to reports.
The argument that a more specific China strategy should be derived from the more general overall strategy only works to a limited extent in this document. The dilemma of a dominant trading partner that is becoming increasingly alienated from Germany in terms of its willingness to engage in dialogue and its practiced values is discussed here, above all with regard to Russia.
The tough decisions on China have thus been postponed again. Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressly emphasized that he was aiming for a “balance”. German-Chinese government consultations will be held in Berlin next week.
Numerous paragraphs of the paper, however, refer to issues where China is the biggest headache for German policymakers. “In general, we must end or at least reduce unilateral dependencies in critical areas, especially through diversification,” it says. Commodity projects are to be targeted together with the business community. For example, there should be government incentives for companies to build up reserves of critical raw materials to compensate for supply disruptions.
In general, international economic and financial relations are to be checked for unilateral dependencies because this has a security policy dimension. But these generalized passages do not answer the question of how the economy should diversify away from the largest market, largest production location and largest supplier without replacement.
The subject of large parts of the paper is the material equipment of the security organs and their European coordination. The approach of “integrated security,” which underlies the National Security Strategy, is intended to go beyond the previous focus on armed forces and diplomacy but also to look at internal security, cyber threats, the effects of economic policy and climate change.
“Bringing all strands of policy” together, however, must succeed without additional funding for the time being, in the view of the traffic light coalition: “In view of the considerable current demands on our public budgets, we are striving to manage the tasks of this strategy without placing an additional burden on the federal budget as a whole.” Lindner rejects the target of two percent of economic output for the defense budget as “not feasible”.
The guidelines of the new strategy under the slogans “Robust. Resilient. Sustainable.” essentially summarize the government’s previous efforts but hardly provide for any fundamentally new approaches. There is no provision for a national security council, as was repeatedly called for in the debate on this strategy, including by the coalition.
Both Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock (The Greens) and Scholz stressed that the German government’s work in response to Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine showed that the government apparatus was capable of acting and that no new body needed to be established. Finn Mayer-Kuckuk/Thomas Wiegold
There is currently a debate in China about raising the retirement age. Jin Weigang, president of the Chinese Academy of Labor and Social Security Sciences, recently announced: “People approaching retirement age will have to delay retirement by a few months.” Currently, men in China retire at age 60 and women at age 55. China’s President Xi Jinping (习近平) turns 70 this Thursday. So it would be high time for him to retire.
But as if Jin Weigang had the same thought, he added in an interview with the Global Times newspaper: “The most important feature of the reform is that people can decide for themselves when they want to retire, depending on their circumstances and conditions.” Xi Jinping’s decision is clear. To that end, he has even had the 1982 Chinese constitution’s term limit, and thus the age limit for the office of president, lifted.
Xi Jinping began his third term as president of China this year. And it doesn’t have to stop there. Theoretically, he can rule for life. A circumstance that politicians and legal experts actually wanted to prevent in the 1982 constitution.
With Mao’s reign in mind, they feared that a lifetime in office would again lead to arbitrariness and tyranny, especially in a one-party state. “If someone stays in office for 15 years, the people won’t dare express their opinions to him,” said Fang Yi, one of the drafters of that constitution.
And not only the people. In the current Politburo, at the latest, Xi is surrounded only by loyal cadres. Since then, even in the closest leadership circle, Xi has only been told what he wants to say, critics fear.
As evidence of how far Xi was disconnected from reality, some cite China’s strict zero-Covid policy. With all his might, Xi had rejected foreign mRNA vaccines, preferring to send millions of people into months-long lockdowns. Only when discontent broke out on the streets of several metropolises did Xi relent and have all restrictions lifted.
The problem is obvious: The more power a person has, the more error-prone the system becomes. And the more difficult it is to correct mistakes. Xi is still succeeding. But the next question immediately arises.
Only he himself knows for sure. A glance at his great rival in Washington makes him seem almost youthful: US President Joe Biden is 80 years old, while his predecessor and possible challenger Donald Trump is 76. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Xi will make his retirement dependent on the age of his counterparts.
Rather, it would be up to Xi himself to build a successor. Deng Xiaoping once installed Jiang Zemin. He, in turn, handed over the leadership to Wen Jiabao and Hu Jintao in an orderly fashion. Even when bitter trench warfare arose again in the CP, it was possible to agree on a candidate in due time after two terms in office: Xi Jinping was considered at the time to be a compromise who would not hurt anyone. Things turned out differently. And Xi himself has not yet chosen a successor. Last October, he was confirmed as general secretary of the Communist Party for another five years at the party congress. Why is Xi doing this?
One theory is that Xi simply doesn’t trust anyone else to do the job. His mission manifests itself in the ideas of the “Chinese Dream” (中国梦) and the “rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” (中华民族伟大复兴). Xi sees both of these in jeopardy. China is currently facing huge problems: weak economic growth, real estate bubble, indebted provinces. In addition, youth unemployment is at record levels. China’s society is also shrinking and getting older.
In terms of foreign policy, the situation is hardly any better: The competition with the US is getting tougher and tougher, in Europe China’s annoyance is spreading, and neighboring countries are increasingly concerned about China’s strength. And the list could be continued with topics such as power shortages, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Ukraine, Russia and the Belt and Road Initiative.
In such a situation, it would be irresponsible from Xi’s point of view to send the CP into a delicate transition process. So he has to do it himself, as China’s COE – Chairman Of Everything. Xi not only heads the party, the state and the military but also leads countless other leadership groups: on reform policy, the economy and finance, Hong Kong and Macao, national security, the modernization of the military or cyber security. In short, Xi is “chairman of everything”.
Another theory is that Xi cannot resign because, otherwise, he would have to fear for his own fate. After all, to become so powerful in the first place, Xi had to eliminate countless rivals along the way. Former Vice Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun, ex-security czar Zhou Yongkang and Bo Xilai are only the most famous names on a long list.
Especially under the pretext of “fighting corruption” many were literally put through the wringer. The “tigers” as well as the “flies”, the large as well as the rather small cadres. In just four years, more than 1.3 million officials and civil servants fell into the clutches of the all-powerful Central Disciplinary Commission. Many of them, their families and their networks are now waiting for their chance to take revenge.
Xi had to experience in his own family how quickly fate can turn: His father, Xi Zhongxun (习仲勋), was a revolutionary of the first hour and deputy prime minister of China – until Mao suddenly dropped his close confidant in 1962.
One way out for Xi would be to build a strong successor. But even if Xi were to find someone he trusted to lead China, it would be an extremely difficult balancing act: Xi‘s successor would have to be strong enough to protect Xi from his opponents even in retirement. On the other hand, he should not be too strong either because few retired leaders have managed to accustom their egos to a life in the second row.
Even the often-praised Deng Xiaoping, who had the orderly two-term transition introduced, continued to pull the strings in the background as the “outstanding leader” until his death. Time and again, he interfered in current politics-whenever he thought his political legacy was in danger. In the case of Xi Jinping, that would probably be: always.
Renowned artist and designer Huang Yongyu has died. His family announced that he passed away on Wednesday afternoon. He was 99 years old. Huang is best known in China for designing stamps featuring the twelve Chinese zodiac animals. In January, he created stamps for the Year of the Rabbit (2023).
The request reached me last summer: I had published a photo showing me with Dr. Wang Huiyao, the founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization (CCG). Was I not aware that I had allowed myself to be photographed with a representative of the Chinese “United Front”?
What had happened? On the occasion of a European trip by Dr. Wang, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, I had one of the few opportunities to meet a representative of a respected Chinese think tank in person – hosting a working breakfast in Berlin on the future of German-Chinese relations.
Kindly, I pointed out to the questioner, a young journalist from a major German newspaper, that Dr. Wang was a respected scholar and knowledgeable expert on Chinese foreign policy. I mentioned that the CCG cooperates with the Munich Security Conference and hosted a dinner there in February 2020, where even (the US Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, editor’s note) John Kerry was photographed with Dr. Wang. Unfortunately, it made no difference; the young man’s judgment was already fixed. I had become part of a Chinese “influence operation”.
This attribution was not new to me. In 2019, together with the former Vice President of the German Bundestag, Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich, I founded the “China-Bruecke” in Berlin. The idea that there could be a circle of personalities from business, science, culture and politics who, out of their own conviction – without any incentive from Chinese authorities – could advocate for more channels of dialogue and a more constructive approach to China already exceeded the imagination of many media representatives. It was entirely irrelevant that the China Bridge did not accept Chinese citizens or Chinese contributions: of course, it too was a Chinese “influence operation”.
Recently, I had the pleasure once again. In 2016, I was the patron of the founding of a Sino-German alliance of industrial cities, which aimed to establish a platform for professional exchange between municipal economic developers from Germany and China for investments in each other’s countries, on the initiative and with the support of the southern Chinese city of Foshan. Not entirely unsuccessful: More than 40 cities were won over for the project. The German Trade and Invest Agency (GTAI) and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce’s China Investment Promotion Agency (CIPA) served as advisory board members. But thanks to the renewed efforts of courageous journalists to protect Germany from “attempted infiltration”, I now know that this too was nothing more than an “influence operation”.
“Influence operations” everywhere. Since the publication of Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s book “Hidden Hand: Exposing How The Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping The World” 2020, the claim that China, guided by an invisible hand, is “undermining Western democracies” with various initiatives has become a guiding principle in much of the China reporting in our country.
Advocates for German-Chinese cooperation are defamed, and their reputation is damaged, as if it were about proving that our tabloid media can still compete with those that Heinrich Boell made the subject of his 1974 narrative, “The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum”. And all of this is fueled by a journalistic ethos that believes it can compensate for lack of knowledge and expertise with the right “attitude”.
In the 2000s, I was a member of the state board of the German Journalists’ Association in Berlin for some time. At that time, it was the sponsor of the Berlin Journalist School and had many discussions about quality assurance in reporting. Reflection on one’s own journalistic actions and their consequences had a high priority in these discussions. Today, in a time of increasing ideology and polarization in our debates, where all kinds of conspiracy theories flourish, not much seems to be left of that.
The mantra of ubiquitous “infiltration” by China bears more than a resemblance to the “Deep State” murmurs of the “free thinkers”. However, its advocates are bidding farewell to a new, self-inflicted immaturity.
In the past, scaffolding was often made of bamboo. Nowadays, even in China, it is made of steel. Despite the ongoing real estate crisis, many cities are filled with these scaffolds. The construction boom in China continues. However, buyers don’t necessarily find the finished properties. Vacancy rates are reaching new records. That’s how the “Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics” works.
