As editor-in-chief of Table.Briefings, I want to introduce you today to our new product, which is available alongside China.Table:
CEO.Table – the new Saturday issue of Table.Briefings.
Germany’s economic model is currently undergoing a global stress test – wealth is being redistributed, entire industries are in upheaval and the industrial foundations are crumbling. What was considered crisis-proof yesterday may be outdated today. Germany needs a renaissance of its economic basis. The recovery effort can only succeed if politics, business and science join forces.
The new CEO.Table is our journalistic contribution to this.
Starting this Saturday at 6 a.m., we will launch the new Saturday issue of Table.Briefings – a free executive briefing for CEOs and everyone who has anything to do with them.
Competent and concise. Each week, we analyze the most important trends, theses and topics from the executive floors, strategy departments and research teams of the business world. Our editorial director Thilo Boss and his team curate interviews, speeches and presentations by CEOs from the previous week and offer you a best-of from our China, Climate, Europe, ESG, Security, Africa, Agrifood, Education and Research briefings.
Our CEO.Index is the first business medium to comprehensively evaluate the performance of managers. In the CEO.Survey section, the Forsa Institute exclusively interviews decision-makers on current issues and we list the must-reads of technology and IT publications. In addition, you will regularly find the most important executive personnel news from Germany’s boardrooms in CEO.Table. And in our CEO.Economist section, renowned economists such as IfW President Moritz Schularick, economist Veronika Grimm, economist Philippa Sigl-Glöckner, Prognos Chief Economist Michael Böhmer and the President of the IWH Halle, Reint E. Gropp, assess the current state of Germany.
As a licensee, you are one of the individuals who are needed for Germany’s economic resurgence. So please take a seat at our CEO.Table, and let us look together at the future of Germany as an economic nation.
Please feel free to leave your feedback and suggestions. Click here for information about our new product.
If you do not wish to receive the CEO.Table, you can unsubscribe here.
After the draft election manifestos of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) were announced, China experts praised Alliance 90/The Greens for their unequivocal words towards Beijing. This is revealed by a Table.Briefings poll on the drafts, which have yet to be approved by the respective parties. The CDU/CSU proposals have provoked mixed reactions, while the SPD has been accused of looking at China through rose-colored glasses.
Noah Barkin from the German Marshall Fund and the Rhodium Group comments on the Green Party: “They are the only ones who support the European Commission’s trade defense measures and use the term ‘economic security’ when defining the political challenge.” This shows that the Green Party’s China policy is closest to the approach in Brussels and Washington, says Barkin.
The expert on transatlantic China policy criticizes the CDU/CSU parties for ignoring Taiwan in their paper: “In view of China’s recent attempts to shift the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through military maneuvers and coercion, this is a major omission.” The SPD and the Greens each mention Taiwan once in their respective drafts.
Barkin criticizes the Chancellor’s party for still seeing China through rose-colored glasses. He says the SPD underestimates the economic and security policy risks posed by China. “Scholz has proven this in his three years as chancellor,” says Barkin.
Jürgen Matthes from the German Economic Institute in Cologne thinks that the SPD and CDU/CSU still neglect China. “China has so far only played a minor role in the SPD and CDU/CSU drafts. The Greens are the only one of the three examined parties to deal with China in greater detail in their draft election manifesto,” says Matthes.
Matthes welcomes the Greens addressing sensitive issues – unfair subsidies, the Chinese threat to economic security and critical infrastructure. In their draft manifesto, the Greens called for countervailing duties against dumping, state subsidies for EV purchases and an investment screening law for strategically important sectors, among other things.
The economist also praises the CDU/CSU. Matthes believes the party alliance’s commitment to broader independent China research makes sense, as there is still a particular lack of China expertise in the German economy. According to the draft program, the CDU/CSU considers “strategic security research” to be of “existential importance” for Germany. For this reason, the party around chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz calls for the creation of a competence network, the targeted promotion of existing expertise and a network for “independent China sciences.”
In the triad of partner, competitor and systemic rival, the three parties seem to position themselves differently, according to Matthes. The wish for a prudent China policy and partnership-based cooperation opportunities with China gives the impression that the SPD is coming across as “too soft,” Matthes concludes. The Greens and the CDU/CSU, on the other hand, placed much more emphasis on systemic rivalry with their more critical statements.
Political scientist Andreas Fulda predicts that the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, will score points with his China approach when it comes to economic security. “Based on the European approach of ‘protect, promote, partner,’ he has introduced tangible measures as minister of economic affairs and vice chancellor to strengthen the resilience of the German economy towards China,” said Fulda.
Meanwhile, the German Chamber of Foreign Trade (AHK) in China has called for more support for industry and business from the next German government. Oliver Oehms, Managing Director of the AHK in North China, said on request: “We must be aware that the future of many German companies will also be decided in China.” He said that the government could support companies through targeted cooperation formats. In addition, the AHK advocates targeted initiatives to promote a differentiated understanding of China and to expand China expertise in Germany.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the EU declined to comment on party political plans, but emphasized the importance of trade between Germany and China. Secretary General Fang Dongkui said: “We hope that the developing political dynamics in Germany will strengthen Sino-German relations and improve China-EU relations.”
The latest publication by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), “Research Nation China: Partner, Competitor and Systemic Rival,” which was published on Tuesday, criticizes the pure self-regulation of individual scientific institutions and universities on Sino-German research cooperation as inefficient and dangerous.
It states: “The current research safety approach in Germany relies on self-regulation, which has led to an inconsistent ‘patchwork’ of more or less strict or still developing review mechanisms at various institutions.” Therefore, it proposes a central contact point for research security at the federal level, which would provide institutions with information.
The paper’s author for the CDU/CSU-affiliated foundation is China expert Michael Laha, Senior Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), where he is responsible for research and technology policy in China. In conversation with Table.Briefings, Laha cites two reasons why the mere self-acquisition of information for researchers to carry out their own checks is insufficient: a lack of uniformity and excessive workload.
During his research, he identified the specific need to “support researchers with information when reviewing research partners.” He found that there are no easy answers when it comes to China and that any consideration of research projects benefits enormously from detailed information about the intentions and goals of research partners, funding organizations and local stakeholders.
That is why he believes providing German researchers with uniform access to China-related information is necessary. “That doesn’t mean people can’t have different opinions on China, but at least everyone in the research community must be given the most complete picture possible.” Gathering such expertise is hugely time-consuming, which makes it quite expensive. For this reason, it would make sense to centralize and increase resources in this area.
While representatives of leading scientific organizations have repeatedly advocated the preservation of scientific freedom and self-responsibility of science in the past – with regard to the selection and supervision of research collaborations with China – the KAS paper proposes that consultations with the central contact point should be made a prerequisite for the allocation of funding in more cases than before.
In his paper, Laha also deals with the question of where such a central contact point could be based. He considers the German Research Foundation (DFG), the project management agencies, the Ministry of Education and Research, the DAAD Center for International Academic Cooperation and a proposed national research security infrastructure (NFSI). Laha favors this solution, which is based on the concept of the national research data infrastructure (NFDI).
Accordingly, the NFSI would receive funding from the German parliament and could be put out to tender by the DFG. As an association, the NFSI would administrate itself and could act autonomously. This would allow various stakeholders in the research community to be involved, creating a balance between centralization and decentralization and ensuring distance between the review process and politics.
According to Laha, the biggest risk when dealing with Chinese partners is “strengthening the Chinese military or helping the Chinese state develop technological instruments that are used to violate human rights.” However, in the event of complete decoupling, he sees a significant risk that German science and research will be excluded from Chinese knowledge about future technologies, for example, in battery research.
However, maintaining this balance would very quickly lead to difficult questions. “After all, how do you know that batteries that you are jointly researching are not being used for military purposes, for example, in drones such as those currently being used on the battlefield in Ukraine?” asks Laha.
Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China has developed into a leading research nation. However, the political environment in China has also become more authoritarian and security experts warn of an unintended knowledge drain. In its diagnosis, the paper largely agrees with the outgoing German government’s China strategy.
Michael Laha believes that in the coming months and years, the debate on research security in Germany and throughout the EU will come to a head. He considers safeguarding research security an important task for the next German government and the newly appointed EU Commission. “The EU Commission wants to establish a European competence center for research security. It would then support research security centers in EU member states.”
However, the research security landscape in Germany is currently so fragmented that it is not clear who exactly would be the German point of contact in this case, he says. Partly due to the need to be able to coordinate with the EU Commission effectively, he considers it worthwhile to set up a national contact point for research security.
Whether and to what extent the paper’s proposals could be reflected in the CDU/CSU’s election campaign or even in a new government coalition agreement remains to be seen. The election manifesto, which Table.Briefings already seen before its official publication this Tuesday, only addresses economic relations with the People’s Republic.
It states: “We want to maintain close economic relations with China, provided they are based on the principle of reciprocity. At the same time, we will reduce critical economic dependencies, for example, through greater diversification of sales markets, raw material sources, and supply chains, as well as the protection of critical infrastructure and security-relevant technology.” It does not specify how exactly this difficult balance is to be maintained.
Sinolytics is a research-based business consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and specific business activities in the People’s Republic.
Whether it’s under Grandma’s Christmas tree or at a Christmas party in a hipster club – vinyl appears to be immortal. In Chinese, vinyl records are simply called “singing records” (唱 chàng “to sing” plus 片 piàn “disk, record”). And that sums up the essence of their function nicely.
As editor-in-chief of Table.Briefings, I want to introduce you today to our new product, which is available alongside China.Table:
CEO.Table – the new Saturday issue of Table.Briefings.
Germany’s economic model is currently undergoing a global stress test – wealth is being redistributed, entire industries are in upheaval and the industrial foundations are crumbling. What was considered crisis-proof yesterday may be outdated today. Germany needs a renaissance of its economic basis. The recovery effort can only succeed if politics, business and science join forces.
The new CEO.Table is our journalistic contribution to this.
Starting this Saturday at 6 a.m., we will launch the new Saturday issue of Table.Briefings – a free executive briefing for CEOs and everyone who has anything to do with them.
Competent and concise. Each week, we analyze the most important trends, theses and topics from the executive floors, strategy departments and research teams of the business world. Our editorial director Thilo Boss and his team curate interviews, speeches and presentations by CEOs from the previous week and offer you a best-of from our China, Climate, Europe, ESG, Security, Africa, Agrifood, Education and Research briefings.
Our CEO.Index is the first business medium to comprehensively evaluate the performance of managers. In the CEO.Survey section, the Forsa Institute exclusively interviews decision-makers on current issues and we list the must-reads of technology and IT publications. In addition, you will regularly find the most important executive personnel news from Germany’s boardrooms in CEO.Table. And in our CEO.Economist section, renowned economists such as IfW President Moritz Schularick, economist Veronika Grimm, economist Philippa Sigl-Glöckner, Prognos Chief Economist Michael Böhmer and the President of the IWH Halle, Reint E. Gropp, assess the current state of Germany.
As a licensee, you are one of the individuals who are needed for Germany’s economic resurgence. So please take a seat at our CEO.Table, and let us look together at the future of Germany as an economic nation.
Please feel free to leave your feedback and suggestions. Click here for information about our new product.
If you do not wish to receive the CEO.Table, you can unsubscribe here.
After the draft election manifestos of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) were announced, China experts praised Alliance 90/The Greens for their unequivocal words towards Beijing. This is revealed by a Table.Briefings poll on the drafts, which have yet to be approved by the respective parties. The CDU/CSU proposals have provoked mixed reactions, while the SPD has been accused of looking at China through rose-colored glasses.
Noah Barkin from the German Marshall Fund and the Rhodium Group comments on the Green Party: “They are the only ones who support the European Commission’s trade defense measures and use the term ‘economic security’ when defining the political challenge.” This shows that the Green Party’s China policy is closest to the approach in Brussels and Washington, says Barkin.
The expert on transatlantic China policy criticizes the CDU/CSU parties for ignoring Taiwan in their paper: “In view of China’s recent attempts to shift the status quo in the Taiwan Strait through military maneuvers and coercion, this is a major omission.” The SPD and the Greens each mention Taiwan once in their respective drafts.
Barkin criticizes the Chancellor’s party for still seeing China through rose-colored glasses. He says the SPD underestimates the economic and security policy risks posed by China. “Scholz has proven this in his three years as chancellor,” says Barkin.
Jürgen Matthes from the German Economic Institute in Cologne thinks that the SPD and CDU/CSU still neglect China. “China has so far only played a minor role in the SPD and CDU/CSU drafts. The Greens are the only one of the three examined parties to deal with China in greater detail in their draft election manifesto,” says Matthes.
Matthes welcomes the Greens addressing sensitive issues – unfair subsidies, the Chinese threat to economic security and critical infrastructure. In their draft manifesto, the Greens called for countervailing duties against dumping, state subsidies for EV purchases and an investment screening law for strategically important sectors, among other things.
The economist also praises the CDU/CSU. Matthes believes the party alliance’s commitment to broader independent China research makes sense, as there is still a particular lack of China expertise in the German economy. According to the draft program, the CDU/CSU considers “strategic security research” to be of “existential importance” for Germany. For this reason, the party around chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz calls for the creation of a competence network, the targeted promotion of existing expertise and a network for “independent China sciences.”
In the triad of partner, competitor and systemic rival, the three parties seem to position themselves differently, according to Matthes. The wish for a prudent China policy and partnership-based cooperation opportunities with China gives the impression that the SPD is coming across as “too soft,” Matthes concludes. The Greens and the CDU/CSU, on the other hand, placed much more emphasis on systemic rivalry with their more critical statements.
Political scientist Andreas Fulda predicts that the Green Party’s candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, will score points with his China approach when it comes to economic security. “Based on the European approach of ‘protect, promote, partner,’ he has introduced tangible measures as minister of economic affairs and vice chancellor to strengthen the resilience of the German economy towards China,” said Fulda.
Meanwhile, the German Chamber of Foreign Trade (AHK) in China has called for more support for industry and business from the next German government. Oliver Oehms, Managing Director of the AHK in North China, said on request: “We must be aware that the future of many German companies will also be decided in China.” He said that the government could support companies through targeted cooperation formats. In addition, the AHK advocates targeted initiatives to promote a differentiated understanding of China and to expand China expertise in Germany.
The Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the EU declined to comment on party political plans, but emphasized the importance of trade between Germany and China. Secretary General Fang Dongkui said: “We hope that the developing political dynamics in Germany will strengthen Sino-German relations and improve China-EU relations.”
The latest publication by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS), “Research Nation China: Partner, Competitor and Systemic Rival,” which was published on Tuesday, criticizes the pure self-regulation of individual scientific institutions and universities on Sino-German research cooperation as inefficient and dangerous.
It states: “The current research safety approach in Germany relies on self-regulation, which has led to an inconsistent ‘patchwork’ of more or less strict or still developing review mechanisms at various institutions.” Therefore, it proposes a central contact point for research security at the federal level, which would provide institutions with information.
The paper’s author for the CDU/CSU-affiliated foundation is China expert Michael Laha, Senior Research Fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), where he is responsible for research and technology policy in China. In conversation with Table.Briefings, Laha cites two reasons why the mere self-acquisition of information for researchers to carry out their own checks is insufficient: a lack of uniformity and excessive workload.
During his research, he identified the specific need to “support researchers with information when reviewing research partners.” He found that there are no easy answers when it comes to China and that any consideration of research projects benefits enormously from detailed information about the intentions and goals of research partners, funding organizations and local stakeholders.
That is why he believes providing German researchers with uniform access to China-related information is necessary. “That doesn’t mean people can’t have different opinions on China, but at least everyone in the research community must be given the most complete picture possible.” Gathering such expertise is hugely time-consuming, which makes it quite expensive. For this reason, it would make sense to centralize and increase resources in this area.
While representatives of leading scientific organizations have repeatedly advocated the preservation of scientific freedom and self-responsibility of science in the past – with regard to the selection and supervision of research collaborations with China – the KAS paper proposes that consultations with the central contact point should be made a prerequisite for the allocation of funding in more cases than before.
In his paper, Laha also deals with the question of where such a central contact point could be based. He considers the German Research Foundation (DFG), the project management agencies, the Ministry of Education and Research, the DAAD Center for International Academic Cooperation and a proposed national research security infrastructure (NFSI). Laha favors this solution, which is based on the concept of the national research data infrastructure (NFDI).
Accordingly, the NFSI would receive funding from the German parliament and could be put out to tender by the DFG. As an association, the NFSI would administrate itself and could act autonomously. This would allow various stakeholders in the research community to be involved, creating a balance between centralization and decentralization and ensuring distance between the review process and politics.
According to Laha, the biggest risk when dealing with Chinese partners is “strengthening the Chinese military or helping the Chinese state develop technological instruments that are used to violate human rights.” However, in the event of complete decoupling, he sees a significant risk that German science and research will be excluded from Chinese knowledge about future technologies, for example, in battery research.
However, maintaining this balance would very quickly lead to difficult questions. “After all, how do you know that batteries that you are jointly researching are not being used for military purposes, for example, in drones such as those currently being used on the battlefield in Ukraine?” asks Laha.
Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China has developed into a leading research nation. However, the political environment in China has also become more authoritarian and security experts warn of an unintended knowledge drain. In its diagnosis, the paper largely agrees with the outgoing German government’s China strategy.
Michael Laha believes that in the coming months and years, the debate on research security in Germany and throughout the EU will come to a head. He considers safeguarding research security an important task for the next German government and the newly appointed EU Commission. “The EU Commission wants to establish a European competence center for research security. It would then support research security centers in EU member states.”
However, the research security landscape in Germany is currently so fragmented that it is not clear who exactly would be the German point of contact in this case, he says. Partly due to the need to be able to coordinate with the EU Commission effectively, he considers it worthwhile to set up a national contact point for research security.
Whether and to what extent the paper’s proposals could be reflected in the CDU/CSU’s election campaign or even in a new government coalition agreement remains to be seen. The election manifesto, which Table.Briefings already seen before its official publication this Tuesday, only addresses economic relations with the People’s Republic.
It states: “We want to maintain close economic relations with China, provided they are based on the principle of reciprocity. At the same time, we will reduce critical economic dependencies, for example, through greater diversification of sales markets, raw material sources, and supply chains, as well as the protection of critical infrastructure and security-relevant technology.” It does not specify how exactly this difficult balance is to be maintained.
Sinolytics is a research-based business consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and specific business activities in the People’s Republic.
Whether it’s under Grandma’s Christmas tree or at a Christmas party in a hipster club – vinyl appears to be immortal. In Chinese, vinyl records are simply called “singing records” (唱 chàng “to sing” plus 片 piàn “disk, record”). And that sums up the essence of their function nicely.
