The so-called Due Diligence Act, which will come into force next year, will obligate German companies to check their supply chains for human rights violations, corruption and environmental pollution. Those who are not sustainable and ethical risk heavy fines and, one day, perhaps even claims for damages from affected employees and their families.
But how are you supposed to verify whether individual components are truly ethical? The focus here is on the increasingly economically powerful region of Xinjiang, whose name has already become synonymous with human rights violations. Marcel Grzanna spoke with experts about the practical implementation of the law. Lawyers are sure that feigned ignorance will not protect against legal consequences. The risk of massive damage to a company’s reputation is simply too high.
Fighting ignorance is also the goal of the Great Translation Movement. On its Twitter account, the anonymous collective translates articles from Chinese state media and Chinese social media comments into languages such as English and French. Contrary to the image of a peace-loving nation that Beijing likes to portray to the outside world, some of the content is so inhumane that members of the translation group have to take breaks from time to time to avoid “endangering their mental health”.
These translating dissidents have attracted so many followers in the meantime that China’s government has supposedly even dialed back its strident nationalism somewhat in order to avoid even greater damage to its international reputation. A remarkable turn of events in an authoritarian state that has been forcing its citizens to self-censor for years with a highly sophisticated surveillance apparatus.
Pacifico Renewables Yield (PRY) has no illusions. The German company, based in Gruenwald near Munich, buys and operates solar and wind parks all over Europe. Any projects it invests in must meet high social and environmental standards. For financing, the company issues green bonds or obtains loans from sustainability banks with the strictest standards.
But when it comes to China and sustainability, especially in the solar industry, CEO Martin Siddiqui knows very well that there are no guarantees. “The majority of components come from China, and there are suppliers who produce with fossil energy, or whose products are made through forced labor,” Siddiqui says. The company works as hard as it can to trace and audit companies further and more precisely along supply chains, the 37-year-old says. However, he cannot guarantee that all the modules installed in his company’s parks have been produced in a 100 percent sustainable manner.
Not even politicians want to force guarantees when the German Due Diligence Act comes into force next year. Commonly referred to as the Supply Chain Act, the law aims to make products and services from German companies more sustainable. Forced labor, human rights violations, corruption, environmental pollution – all of these are to be excluded from the value chain as far as possible from 2023 onwards wherever German companies are involved.
Now companies that source solar modules, electrical components, cotton, or tomatoes from Xinjiang wonder how they are going to manage to clean up their supply chains. The northwestern Chinese autonomous region is synonymous with human rights violations. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO) speaks of a “widespread and systematic” forced labor program. Primarily Uyghurs, but also Turkish and other Muslim minorities, are affected.
But some industries are so dependent on supplies from Xinjiang that they can’t cover their demand from other sources within just a few years. A fifth of global cotton comes from Xinjiang, no other region in the world plants and harvests more tomatoes for the global market, and the photovoltaic industry also relies heavily on modules from China.
What now? “It is almost impossible to reliably prove that there is no forced labor in any of the high-risk products,” says Joachim Trebeck of the Cologne-based law firm Trebeck & von Broich. The labor lawyer nonetheless believes that the law makes sense because Germany, as an “interesting market, bundles its influence on other countries.” But Trebeck also says, “If a supplier wants to cheat, they will find ways and means.”
For PRY solar farm operators, that’s not yet a reason to get nervous. The Supply Chain Act will first only target the big players with 3,000 employees upwards. In 2024, its scope will be extended to all companies with 1,000 or more employees. Only when the European Union also implements a Europe-wide supply chain law will the legal framework advance to the SME sector. The proposal currently under discussion for the EU directive in the high-risk sectors of textiles, agriculture and mining is 250 employees and €40 million in annual revenue. But it will probably take another four, perhaps five years before that happens.
In addition, the duty of care applies, which states that companies do not have to guarantee the prevention of violations. “However, they must do everything necessary to comply with their due diligence obligations. This is the only way they can avoid a fine,” says Christoph Schork of law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, who has been preparing clients for the introduction of the Supply Chain Act for the past two and a half years. “But it also means that a company may have to approach second-, third- or fourth-tier suppliers if there are concrete indications of forced labor,” Schork says.
A monumental task. The larger a company, the broader its network. Several thousand direct suppliers are not the exception but the rule for huge corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees. The painstaking work begins with a thorough risk analysis. Each risk must be evaluated internally and addressed based on its urgency. At the top of the list: suppliers from Xinjiang.
The law requires “substantiated knowledge” before the company’s responsibility also extends to the indirect supplier in the supply chain. In other words, there must be serious and verifiable indications of potential violations. “With the Uyghur issue, no one can say they were not aware of it,” says Schork. But there will be other cases where the suspicions are less obvious and companies may be tempted to feign ignorance.
Lawyer Schork, however, does not believe that feigning ignorance will pay off in the long run. “The fear of reputational damage that can result from such ignorance is likely to keep most companies from doing so.” In addition, companies have realized that they can benefit from true sustainability because they are following the social zeitgeist. Some are already making corresponding progress in their preparation.
For the time being, though, even experts are still at a loss as to what the specifics will be. “At the moment, we are all still looking into the black box. There is simply no best-practice solution,” says Schork. He also thinks the responsible Federal Office of Export Control and Economics “won’t set off a wave of sanctions” right after the law comes into effect. The authority, which is based in Niederlausitz, Germany, would first have to sort itself. However, if violations are found, it can impose fines of up to €8 million.
Politicians hope that whistleblowers will provide crucial support for companies. German companies must set up low-threshold channels through which complaints from all over the world about violations of labor or human rights can be submitted. Companies must also urge their suppliers to inform their own suppliers about the existence of these channels. “There are a variety of options when it comes to implementing due diligence. Questionnaires, audits, training courses are all possible – any appropriate measure will serve to fulfill the legal requirements and provide greater security,” says Schork.
The introduction of the act offers German companies a glimpse of the even stricter EU directive in a few years. Once the EU sets the standard, companies could not only face fines, but millions in damages claims from affected employees or their families. German companies may then have to dig deep into their pockets for the labor law deficits at their suppliers if they do not take early and decisive action against potential violations.
When Tiziano Terzani, the former China correspondent for German news magazine Der Spiegel who died in 2004, once addressed a Chinese cadre in Mandarin, the cadre allegedly turned to his subordinates and asked, “Which traitor taught him our language?”
Currently, the Chinese government is acting similarly overwhelmed about a Twitter account that has taken on the task of translating Chinese content into different languages. The account, which operates under the name and hashtag #TheGreatTranslationMovement (大翻译运动官方推号), translates posts from official state media as well as Chinese social media comments into English, Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish and Arabic. It mainly chooses comments that have generated a particularly large number of likes and shares in China.
The goal is to show the world how arrogant, nationalistic, indifferent, cruel and sometimes bloodthirsty public opinion in China can be, explains an anonymous member of the network in a Chinese article by Deutsche Welle. For example, the channel features the commentary of a Shanghai university lecturer from the renowned Fudan University, who had claimed on Weibo that the Bucha massacre had merely been staged.
A translated report from the state newspaper People’s Daily claims that the US Army has used patients of a psychiatric hospital in Ukraine as medical guinea pigs. “American devils,” one user calls them in the comments, which are also translated. Another user honors Putin as an “emperor” whose military interventions will bring about world peace.
The posts from The Great Translation Movement show how hate is allowed to run rampant, and even should run rampant, under the supposedly moderate façade of state propaganda. Social media posts condemning the war in Ukraine or advocating Ukrainian positions are rigidly censored in China. Pro-Russian comments, on the other hand, are usually allowed to remain. Even if they are as inhumane as those made available by the “Great Translation Movement” to a non-Chinese-speaking audience. While Beijing outwardly tries to maintain neutrality in the Ukraine war, the approval of such comments does send a message.
And this is precisely where the Great Translation Movement, which now has over 126,000 followers, becomes a problem for Beijing. China’s propaganda ministry makes a clear distinction between which messages it communicates internally and which it sends externally. The higher the nationalistic undertone, the more likely the message is intended for mainland Chinese. In its English-language propaganda media, the People’s Republic usually chooses a more diplomatic tone that also likes to emphasize its own victim role. The aggressive gaffes that the Twitter channel publishes daily in the form of translated screenshots thus put an additional strain on China’s international reputation.
The Twitter account has already taken on several articles published in the Chinese state media, despite the fact that Twitter is blocked in China. The English-language Global Times speaks of a “witch hunt”. The Great Translation Movement, it says, is the brainchild of a few frustrated Chinese who have joined forces with hostile foreign powers to stir up hatred against China’s citizens. Only through such maneuvers can the declining West still feel culturally superior to China, writes Wang Qiang, the article’s author otherwise responsible for military topics. The piece, which is accompanied by an illustration of a panda smeared with paint, ends with a threat to “unmask” the IP addresses of those involved.
However, it is unclear whether the creators of Great Translation Movement are actually located in mainland China. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, one member explains that the group is decentralized. They do not know each other’s identities or whereabouts. What is certain is that the project originated on the American platform Reddit, or more precisely on the sub-Reddit ChonglangTV, one of the largest Chinese-language online forums abroad with more than 53,000 members. In early March, the forum was blocked for allegedly violating personal rights, according to the platform. The translation campaign was triggered by sexist comments by Chinese users who had offered to “take care” of attractive Ukrainian women after the war in Ukraine began.
Some critics say the Great Translation Movement’s translating troublemakers are promoting anti-Chinese or anti-Asian hatred with their selective translations. The platform responded by exposing everyday racism in China alongside politically polarizing comments. Translated comments under an ad by fashion house Gucci, for example, speculate about cotton-picking qualities and the value of a black model on the slave market. According to their own statements, translators of the Translation Movement had to take social media breaks again and again to avoid “endangering their own mental health”.
The channel clearly does not claim to represent a balanced view of Chinese public opinion. Rather, The Great Translation Movement caricatures state media, which itself publishes in several languages, in an attempt to spread the official narrative of China as a peace-loving nation. The account’s popularity abroad has already pressured media and authorities in China to post less hateful content, the translation group writes on Twitter. It was “encouraging” that they already found less and less translation material.
Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
The security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands is in the bag. “The foreign ministers of China and the Solomon Islands officially signed the framework agreement on security cooperation recently,” a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said at the regular press conference on Tuesday. The exact terms of the agreement are not known. The archipelago’s premier, Manasseh Sogavare, had stressed in advance that China would not establish a military base there. However, a leaked draft agreement provides for the possibility of supply stops for Chinese warships.
The agreement is the subject of heated debate (China.Table reported). Australia and the USA fear that China could decisively strengthen its position in the Pacific as a result. In 2019, the Solomon Islands became one of the last countries to diplomatically break ties with Taiwan and recognize the People’s Republic as the one China. This sparked riots against the Chinese population. Part of the new agreement apparently now allows Beijing to send security forces to the islands to protect ethnic Chinese. fin
Nils Schmid describes the past weeks as exhausting and sad. “It is frustrating that diplomacy has failed as a means of conflict resolution,” explains the SPD politician, member of the Bundestag and foreign policy spokesman for his parliamentary group. For a long time, the Ph.D. lawyer had hoped for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis, but to no avail.
China’s reluctance to engage in the crisis is disappointing – but does not surprise him, he says. “It was to be expected,” says the 48-year-old. The country has no experience in mediating between warring parties, he says. But the fact that the Chinese government is not even finding clear words is a missed opportunity to distinguish itself in its international role.
Schmid actually wanted to become a diplomat. He has always been interested in politics, and at the age of 17, he became a member of the SPD and joined the Young Socialists. But: “Becoming a professional politician was not Plan A,” he admits. In 1997, while still studying law, he was unexpectedly elected to the state parliament of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
During his career in state politics, he became deputy prime minister, minister of finance, and minister of economics. In 2016, he ran as the top candidate in the state elections but achieved the SPD’s worst result to date. “That was very bitter because we had done good government work.” He had no chance against the popular incumbent Kretschmann and the AfD, which had been strengthened by the refugee crisis. He used the opportunity to reflect, first with his state association, then personally.
And so he accepted the offer to run for the Bundestag. This was related to the decision to devote more time to his passion for international politics. In the Bundestag, Schmid has represented the constituency of Nuertingen near Stuttgart since 2017 and the foreign policy positions of his parliamentary group since 2018. In addition to the staff in his office, he is supported in his work by three advisors from the foreign policy working group of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The Trier native is convinced: “You can make a difference.” In the current legislative period, the task now is to breathe life into the Indo-Pacific strategy. “Can we manage to bind partners like Japan more closely? Can we Western countries coordinate better against the Chinese offensive on international standards?” says Schmid, naming a few items on his to-do list.
The concept of change through trade with China has failed; instead, he speaks of a “new holy trinity” of systematic rivalry, competition and cooperation. However, there is still room for cooperation, for example in climate policy: “The world is simply far too fragile.” Paul Meerkamp
The large Shanghai lockdown spawns numerous memes. Like this pun on whether or not the lockdown will end at the end of May.
The so-called Due Diligence Act, which will come into force next year, will obligate German companies to check their supply chains for human rights violations, corruption and environmental pollution. Those who are not sustainable and ethical risk heavy fines and, one day, perhaps even claims for damages from affected employees and their families.
But how are you supposed to verify whether individual components are truly ethical? The focus here is on the increasingly economically powerful region of Xinjiang, whose name has already become synonymous with human rights violations. Marcel Grzanna spoke with experts about the practical implementation of the law. Lawyers are sure that feigned ignorance will not protect against legal consequences. The risk of massive damage to a company’s reputation is simply too high.
Fighting ignorance is also the goal of the Great Translation Movement. On its Twitter account, the anonymous collective translates articles from Chinese state media and Chinese social media comments into languages such as English and French. Contrary to the image of a peace-loving nation that Beijing likes to portray to the outside world, some of the content is so inhumane that members of the translation group have to take breaks from time to time to avoid “endangering their mental health”.
These translating dissidents have attracted so many followers in the meantime that China’s government has supposedly even dialed back its strident nationalism somewhat in order to avoid even greater damage to its international reputation. A remarkable turn of events in an authoritarian state that has been forcing its citizens to self-censor for years with a highly sophisticated surveillance apparatus.
Pacifico Renewables Yield (PRY) has no illusions. The German company, based in Gruenwald near Munich, buys and operates solar and wind parks all over Europe. Any projects it invests in must meet high social and environmental standards. For financing, the company issues green bonds or obtains loans from sustainability banks with the strictest standards.
But when it comes to China and sustainability, especially in the solar industry, CEO Martin Siddiqui knows very well that there are no guarantees. “The majority of components come from China, and there are suppliers who produce with fossil energy, or whose products are made through forced labor,” Siddiqui says. The company works as hard as it can to trace and audit companies further and more precisely along supply chains, the 37-year-old says. However, he cannot guarantee that all the modules installed in his company’s parks have been produced in a 100 percent sustainable manner.
Not even politicians want to force guarantees when the German Due Diligence Act comes into force next year. Commonly referred to as the Supply Chain Act, the law aims to make products and services from German companies more sustainable. Forced labor, human rights violations, corruption, environmental pollution – all of these are to be excluded from the value chain as far as possible from 2023 onwards wherever German companies are involved.
Now companies that source solar modules, electrical components, cotton, or tomatoes from Xinjiang wonder how they are going to manage to clean up their supply chains. The northwestern Chinese autonomous region is synonymous with human rights violations. The United Nations’ International Labor Organization (ILO) speaks of a “widespread and systematic” forced labor program. Primarily Uyghurs, but also Turkish and other Muslim minorities, are affected.
But some industries are so dependent on supplies from Xinjiang that they can’t cover their demand from other sources within just a few years. A fifth of global cotton comes from Xinjiang, no other region in the world plants and harvests more tomatoes for the global market, and the photovoltaic industry also relies heavily on modules from China.
What now? “It is almost impossible to reliably prove that there is no forced labor in any of the high-risk products,” says Joachim Trebeck of the Cologne-based law firm Trebeck & von Broich. The labor lawyer nonetheless believes that the law makes sense because Germany, as an “interesting market, bundles its influence on other countries.” But Trebeck also says, “If a supplier wants to cheat, they will find ways and means.”
For PRY solar farm operators, that’s not yet a reason to get nervous. The Supply Chain Act will first only target the big players with 3,000 employees upwards. In 2024, its scope will be extended to all companies with 1,000 or more employees. Only when the European Union also implements a Europe-wide supply chain law will the legal framework advance to the SME sector. The proposal currently under discussion for the EU directive in the high-risk sectors of textiles, agriculture and mining is 250 employees and €40 million in annual revenue. But it will probably take another four, perhaps five years before that happens.
In addition, the duty of care applies, which states that companies do not have to guarantee the prevention of violations. “However, they must do everything necessary to comply with their due diligence obligations. This is the only way they can avoid a fine,” says Christoph Schork of law firm Heuking Kühn Lüer Wojtek, who has been preparing clients for the introduction of the Supply Chain Act for the past two and a half years. “But it also means that a company may have to approach second-, third- or fourth-tier suppliers if there are concrete indications of forced labor,” Schork says.
A monumental task. The larger a company, the broader its network. Several thousand direct suppliers are not the exception but the rule for huge corporations with hundreds of thousands of employees. The painstaking work begins with a thorough risk analysis. Each risk must be evaluated internally and addressed based on its urgency. At the top of the list: suppliers from Xinjiang.
The law requires “substantiated knowledge” before the company’s responsibility also extends to the indirect supplier in the supply chain. In other words, there must be serious and verifiable indications of potential violations. “With the Uyghur issue, no one can say they were not aware of it,” says Schork. But there will be other cases where the suspicions are less obvious and companies may be tempted to feign ignorance.
Lawyer Schork, however, does not believe that feigning ignorance will pay off in the long run. “The fear of reputational damage that can result from such ignorance is likely to keep most companies from doing so.” In addition, companies have realized that they can benefit from true sustainability because they are following the social zeitgeist. Some are already making corresponding progress in their preparation.
For the time being, though, even experts are still at a loss as to what the specifics will be. “At the moment, we are all still looking into the black box. There is simply no best-practice solution,” says Schork. He also thinks the responsible Federal Office of Export Control and Economics “won’t set off a wave of sanctions” right after the law comes into effect. The authority, which is based in Niederlausitz, Germany, would first have to sort itself. However, if violations are found, it can impose fines of up to €8 million.
Politicians hope that whistleblowers will provide crucial support for companies. German companies must set up low-threshold channels through which complaints from all over the world about violations of labor or human rights can be submitted. Companies must also urge their suppliers to inform their own suppliers about the existence of these channels. “There are a variety of options when it comes to implementing due diligence. Questionnaires, audits, training courses are all possible – any appropriate measure will serve to fulfill the legal requirements and provide greater security,” says Schork.
The introduction of the act offers German companies a glimpse of the even stricter EU directive in a few years. Once the EU sets the standard, companies could not only face fines, but millions in damages claims from affected employees or their families. German companies may then have to dig deep into their pockets for the labor law deficits at their suppliers if they do not take early and decisive action against potential violations.
When Tiziano Terzani, the former China correspondent for German news magazine Der Spiegel who died in 2004, once addressed a Chinese cadre in Mandarin, the cadre allegedly turned to his subordinates and asked, “Which traitor taught him our language?”
Currently, the Chinese government is acting similarly overwhelmed about a Twitter account that has taken on the task of translating Chinese content into different languages. The account, which operates under the name and hashtag #TheGreatTranslationMovement (大翻译运动官方推号), translates posts from official state media as well as Chinese social media comments into English, Japanese, French, Korean, Spanish and Arabic. It mainly chooses comments that have generated a particularly large number of likes and shares in China.
The goal is to show the world how arrogant, nationalistic, indifferent, cruel and sometimes bloodthirsty public opinion in China can be, explains an anonymous member of the network in a Chinese article by Deutsche Welle. For example, the channel features the commentary of a Shanghai university lecturer from the renowned Fudan University, who had claimed on Weibo that the Bucha massacre had merely been staged.
A translated report from the state newspaper People’s Daily claims that the US Army has used patients of a psychiatric hospital in Ukraine as medical guinea pigs. “American devils,” one user calls them in the comments, which are also translated. Another user honors Putin as an “emperor” whose military interventions will bring about world peace.
The posts from The Great Translation Movement show how hate is allowed to run rampant, and even should run rampant, under the supposedly moderate façade of state propaganda. Social media posts condemning the war in Ukraine or advocating Ukrainian positions are rigidly censored in China. Pro-Russian comments, on the other hand, are usually allowed to remain. Even if they are as inhumane as those made available by the “Great Translation Movement” to a non-Chinese-speaking audience. While Beijing outwardly tries to maintain neutrality in the Ukraine war, the approval of such comments does send a message.
And this is precisely where the Great Translation Movement, which now has over 126,000 followers, becomes a problem for Beijing. China’s propaganda ministry makes a clear distinction between which messages it communicates internally and which it sends externally. The higher the nationalistic undertone, the more likely the message is intended for mainland Chinese. In its English-language propaganda media, the People’s Republic usually chooses a more diplomatic tone that also likes to emphasize its own victim role. The aggressive gaffes that the Twitter channel publishes daily in the form of translated screenshots thus put an additional strain on China’s international reputation.
The Twitter account has already taken on several articles published in the Chinese state media, despite the fact that Twitter is blocked in China. The English-language Global Times speaks of a “witch hunt”. The Great Translation Movement, it says, is the brainchild of a few frustrated Chinese who have joined forces with hostile foreign powers to stir up hatred against China’s citizens. Only through such maneuvers can the declining West still feel culturally superior to China, writes Wang Qiang, the article’s author otherwise responsible for military topics. The piece, which is accompanied by an illustration of a panda smeared with paint, ends with a threat to “unmask” the IP addresses of those involved.
However, it is unclear whether the creators of Great Translation Movement are actually located in mainland China. In an interview with Deutsche Welle, one member explains that the group is decentralized. They do not know each other’s identities or whereabouts. What is certain is that the project originated on the American platform Reddit, or more precisely on the sub-Reddit ChonglangTV, one of the largest Chinese-language online forums abroad with more than 53,000 members. In early March, the forum was blocked for allegedly violating personal rights, according to the platform. The translation campaign was triggered by sexist comments by Chinese users who had offered to “take care” of attractive Ukrainian women after the war in Ukraine began.
Some critics say the Great Translation Movement’s translating troublemakers are promoting anti-Chinese or anti-Asian hatred with their selective translations. The platform responded by exposing everyday racism in China alongside politically polarizing comments. Translated comments under an ad by fashion house Gucci, for example, speculate about cotton-picking qualities and the value of a black model on the slave market. According to their own statements, translators of the Translation Movement had to take social media breaks again and again to avoid “endangering their own mental health”.
The channel clearly does not claim to represent a balanced view of Chinese public opinion. Rather, The Great Translation Movement caricatures state media, which itself publishes in several languages, in an attempt to spread the official narrative of China as a peace-loving nation. The account’s popularity abroad has already pressured media and authorities in China to post less hateful content, the translation group writes on Twitter. It was “encouraging” that they already found less and less translation material.
Sinolytics is a European consulting and analysis company specializing in China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
The security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands is in the bag. “The foreign ministers of China and the Solomon Islands officially signed the framework agreement on security cooperation recently,” a foreign ministry spokesman in Beijing said at the regular press conference on Tuesday. The exact terms of the agreement are not known. The archipelago’s premier, Manasseh Sogavare, had stressed in advance that China would not establish a military base there. However, a leaked draft agreement provides for the possibility of supply stops for Chinese warships.
The agreement is the subject of heated debate (China.Table reported). Australia and the USA fear that China could decisively strengthen its position in the Pacific as a result. In 2019, the Solomon Islands became one of the last countries to diplomatically break ties with Taiwan and recognize the People’s Republic as the one China. This sparked riots against the Chinese population. Part of the new agreement apparently now allows Beijing to send security forces to the islands to protect ethnic Chinese. fin
Nils Schmid describes the past weeks as exhausting and sad. “It is frustrating that diplomacy has failed as a means of conflict resolution,” explains the SPD politician, member of the Bundestag and foreign policy spokesman for his parliamentary group. For a long time, the Ph.D. lawyer had hoped for a peaceful solution to the Ukraine crisis, but to no avail.
China’s reluctance to engage in the crisis is disappointing – but does not surprise him, he says. “It was to be expected,” says the 48-year-old. The country has no experience in mediating between warring parties, he says. But the fact that the Chinese government is not even finding clear words is a missed opportunity to distinguish itself in its international role.
Schmid actually wanted to become a diplomat. He has always been interested in politics, and at the age of 17, he became a member of the SPD and joined the Young Socialists. But: “Becoming a professional politician was not Plan A,” he admits. In 1997, while still studying law, he was unexpectedly elected to the state parliament of the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg.
During his career in state politics, he became deputy prime minister, minister of finance, and minister of economics. In 2016, he ran as the top candidate in the state elections but achieved the SPD’s worst result to date. “That was very bitter because we had done good government work.” He had no chance against the popular incumbent Kretschmann and the AfD, which had been strengthened by the refugee crisis. He used the opportunity to reflect, first with his state association, then personally.
And so he accepted the offer to run for the Bundestag. This was related to the decision to devote more time to his passion for international politics. In the Bundestag, Schmid has represented the constituency of Nuertingen near Stuttgart since 2017 and the foreign policy positions of his parliamentary group since 2018. In addition to the staff in his office, he is supported in his work by three advisors from the foreign policy working group of the SPD parliamentary group in the Bundestag.
The Trier native is convinced: “You can make a difference.” In the current legislative period, the task now is to breathe life into the Indo-Pacific strategy. “Can we manage to bind partners like Japan more closely? Can we Western countries coordinate better against the Chinese offensive on international standards?” says Schmid, naming a few items on his to-do list.
The concept of change through trade with China has failed; instead, he speaks of a “new holy trinity” of systematic rivalry, competition and cooperation. However, there is still room for cooperation, for example in climate policy: “The world is simply far too fragile.” Paul Meerkamp
The large Shanghai lockdown spawns numerous memes. Like this pun on whether or not the lockdown will end at the end of May.
