From student to master: Chinese carmakers have spent decades trying to learn from the car nation Germany. However, when it comes to building intelligent EVs, Volkswagen is now getting help from a Chinese manufacturer and taking a stake in the EV start-up Xpeng for 700 million euros.
What seems like a defeat for Volkswagen could turn out to be a stroke of luck, writes Joern Petring in his analysis. The company, founded only nine years ago, brings everything to the table that the German company lacks in its race to catch up on the electric market: A fast-charging electric platform and modern software. Investors seem pleased with the cooperation: Xpeng shares skyrocketed by more than 50 percent within a week.
Meanwhile, the German government’s China Strategy, presented in mid-July, keeps experts busy. For instance, it is still unclear what consequences the strategy will have for German academia. Jeffrey Stoff, President of the Center for Research Security & Integrity (CRSI), warns in an interview with Michael Radunski against cooperating too closely with institutions that also have a military background. After all, he says, this is how China got its hands on hypersonic technology.
To some observers, it seemed like a surrender of the German car industry: Last week, Volkswagen announced plans to acquire a stake in the small Chinese EV start-up Xpeng (小鹏汽车 ). For 700 million euros, Volkswagen secured a five percent stake in the Guangzhou-based company. The Germans indirectly admitted that the company could not catch up on the electric car market without Chinese help.
At first glance, it seems hard to imagine that a dwarf like Xpeng could provide a significant tailwind for a giant like Volkswagen. Xpeng sold just about 120,000 vehicles last year, and VW about 70 times as many. And yet the investment in the company, which was founded only nine years ago, could prove to be a stroke of luck.
At least Volkswagen seems to have made a good choice from the available options in its search for a new Chinese partner. Admittedly, Xpeng is far from selling the most EVs in China. The undisputed leader is the Shenzhen-based BYD Group, which sold 1.86 million vehicles in China last year and the most electric cars in the world. Electric pioneer BYD is expanding out of its own strength and certainly does not need a partner like Volkswagen.
The situation is different in the second row. Several innovative start-ups are fighting for a share of the rapidly growing Chinese EV market. Xpeng, NIO, and Li Auto are the three best-known contenders. All three companies are considered strong marketers and drivers of innovation. So far, they are mainly targeting the premium segment. There is no doubt that they can offer their customers what VW has so far failed to do: a smart smartphone on wheels.
That is why VW is primarily interested in Chinese technology. Xpeng contributes to the partnership everything that belongs to the future technology of the car industry, including a fast-charging electric platform and modern software.
Like NIO and Li Auto, Xpeng is listed on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Investors reacted almost euphorically to the news that VW was acquiring a stake in Xpeng. Xpeng shares soared by more than 50 percent between last Wednesday and yesterday (Tuesday).
It is also clear that not only Volkswagen sees potential in Xpeng. The Germans are in good company as shareholders. Prominent Chinese and international backers of Xpeng include Alibaba and Taiwanese iPhone supplier Foxconn. Lei Jun, founder of the Chinese tech company Xiaomi, was also one of Xpeng’s early backers.
In 2018, Xpeng prestigiously unveiled its first production vehicle in Las Vegas, the SUV G. A year later, the company’s second model, the P7 electric sedan, was presented at Auto Shanghai. It was followed by the P5 and the SUV G9. Only three months ago, the SUV coupé G6 celebrated its debut, with which Xpeng aims to challenge Tesla’s Model Y.
Co-founder and CEO He Xiaopeng enjoys an excellent reputation in the Chinese tech industry. The former Alibaba man has already founded several companies, including UCWeb, a Chinese software and mobile internet service provider. Unlike Tesla founder Elon Musk, for example, He is not regarded as someone who makes promises that he can only keep with significant delay or not at all.
Last week, He posted a video on Linked-in showing him driving the Xpeng driving assistance system. This system is supposed to enable autonomous driving to the greatest possible degree. In the video, however, He did not overly praise the company’s system, NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot), but also pointed out its remaining flaws. At a construction site, he noted that the car was driving too cautiously and slowly. And when his car rushed through a puddle at the curb at high speed, the Xpeng boss spoke of a need for improvement.
He also seems to have struck the right note with the Chinese authorities so far. In June, Xpeng was the first company in China to offer its customers the use of the NGP system on some roads in the Chinese capital Beijing. The system can now be used on the highways and ring roads in the city center.
As an agile start-up with Chinese DNA, Xpeng has undoubtedly fared better than Volkswagen in coping with the high development speed in China. However, the company is by no means guaranteed to survive. Similar to NIO or Li Auto, sales figures are still far too low to stay in the black consistently. On top of that, a brutal price war is raging between EV manufacturers in China.
The cooperation with VW should give Xpeng tailwind in several respects. He likely hopes that Volkswagen will help him scale his business. Industry experts also believe that further financial injections from Volkswagen are conceivable.
The results of your recent research on scientific and engineering cooperation between China and Germany are scary. How dangerous is it to cooperate with China?
Well, it depends on the field, but in some fields, it’s pretty dangerous, for example hypersonics research.
You mean hypersonic weapons? High-end missiles, which only a few countries possess like Russia and China. Even the US does not have those missiles.
Yes, and one can argue that researchers from Germany (and other allied nations) helped the PRC develop hypersonic weapons.
How? Germany does not have hypersonic weapons.
Right. But there is a history of PRC researchers collaborating with scientists and engineers around the world that are working on applications that can be used for hypersonic weapons. China put more resources and capacity building into the development of its program and perhaps took some risks that other countries didn’t pursue to get where they are today. But this was enabled by the extensive research collaboration China has enjoyed with advanced nations like Germany.
But then it’s easy to stop: A simple ‘No’ to collaborations on hypersonics.
Unfortunately not, because many of the research fields are dual-use in nature. In the case of hypersonics, some of the research may also be useful for civil aviation and aerospace, such as engine designs and material sciences.
Okay. But, at least the results applied to hypersonic weapons are obviously dangerous. In your research, did you come across some areas that are not so easily identified as dangerous?
Some examples are speech recognition and signal processing for hearing aids. This is important and valuable research. But some of the PRC partners work for a division of one of the Seven Sons of National Defense universities, whose primary mission is to develop defense and weapons systems. That division conducts submarine warfare research for the PLA Navy. So China is seeking to apply signal processing techniques for defense uses such as submarine detection and underwater communications for the Navy.
How could such a collaboration take place?
Because there are no laws against it, not in the US or the EU. Our export control regimes generally do not apply to fundamental research.
The absence of restrictions has a reason: freedom of science. Are you suggesting an interference into the freedom of science?
Yes, there should be more restrictions, but I would not call that interference. Academic freedom does not mean freedom from responsibility when conducting scientific research. We have a collective responsibility to ensure that the work that we do isn’t used for military purposes or human rights abuses by adversarial nations.
Did those scientists help China on purpose or were they just naïve?
I can’t say what the individual motivations or level of knowledge of each researcher was. Generally speaking, there’s a lack of understanding or awareness of who you’re working with. And China sometimes makes that difficult to find out. There can be a lack of transparency, or deliberate obfuscation of what a particular department or lab is doing.
How?
There are different ways. It starts with a lack of any information in English about that organization.
Why should they? They are Chinese, working in China, so their website is in Chinese.
Fair point. But in other cases, websites are blocked from outside of China. Or they use innocuous-sounding English names that are just ridiculous. But the Chinese language indicates it’s a defense lab. That’s intentional.
And you expect, for example, a researcher in Jena to double-check whether websites are accessible from outside China, whether their content is in English and what the Chinese names really mean?
Of course not. It is unreasonable to expect individual researchers to conduct robust risk assessments and due diligence, or to understand the geostrategic implications of the collaborations or the intentions of the PRC.
So then?
First, we need better awareness of these problems and make more of an effort to know who we’re dealing with. This is different from working with scientists in liberal democracies. For example, scientists employed at one of the Seven Sons of National Defense universities; those schools have a primary mission to develop weapons systems. They do engage in other types of scientific research, but they have mandates to identify military uses of all STEM research conducted there.
Okay, awareness. But who is in the lead?
Governments can provide guidelines and restrictions on federal research funding. But even the US government can’t do this on its own. And Germany and the UK have discussed the need to build more competence on China to do this better.
Then who else could help?
We need civil society institutions like the nonprofit I created, along with other NGOs, think tanks and research institutions to come together and collectively build a knowledge base. My study is one part of this effort and is a microcosm of the collective efforts that are needed; I got help from another NGO, academia, and a think tank. This needs to be more systematized internationally, where institutions with unique knowledge and capabilities work together.
Coming back to China. In the past both sides have profited from science collaboration. What has changed?
China has changed in that it has become more authoritarian, more closed off, and more of a human rights abuser than ever before. Our responsibilities go beyond military and defense issues, such as ethics associated with mass surveillance applications. Working with institutions that support China’s public security apparatus is anathema to our values. In my study, there are individuals working with Ministry of Public Security organs and the People’s Armed Police. These are horrendous human rights abusers of the PRC party-state, and working with such organizations on principle is highly problematic. This is true even if the research is not ethically troublesome, such as public safety or fire safety.
So no cooperation with China at all?
We need to do more cost-benefit assessments. There are areas like climate science where the benefits to collaboration outweigh the risks. But we have to draw some redlines. For example, I don’t think we should be working with entities that are part of or directly support China’s defense industry, even in climate areas.
But one could argue that in the end everything in China is under party control.
Yes, this is a complex challenge. But let’s start somewhere because right now, China has unfettered access to the global scientific research enterprise. Let’s start with some high-risk categories that I describe in my book and work to understand where redlines should be drawn.
How pressing is the problem to put it?
My study on Germany indicates that the scope of risky collaborations is quite large. These are urgent issues; we can’t wait years to come up with policies. Otherwise, it will be too late, like in hypersonics where the PRC has already surpassed us and may no longer need to collaborate with us anymore.
Jeffrey Stoff is the founder and president of the Center for Research Security & Integrity (CRSI), a newly established US non-profit organization whose mission is to assist academic, government and private sector institutions in mitigating risks to the security and integrity of research from adversarial or authoritarian nations. His latest publication is “Should Democracies Draw Redlines around Research Collaboration with China? A Case Study of Germany”.
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
Germany’s far north is known for its fresh breezes. Perhaps this will also be noticeable in political Berlin. The new president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Moritz Schularick, has made it clear where he wants to go after taking office at the renowned global economic research institute: To the premier league of think tanks. The research institute, which has been around for 100 years, is considered the prime address for matters of international economics and trade. But Schularick quickly realized that there is a big gap in issues regarding geoeconomics and international macroeconomics. And he wants to fill it with the IfW’s economic expertise.
To this end, the IfW plans to establish a second branch in the German capital, which will deal with precisely these topics and advise policymakers more closely. From Schularick’s point of view, better interlocking of top-level research and policy advice is essential to advance the global transformation processes in the world economy, climate and technology.
His assessment of Germany’s “lack of intellectual leadership” is likely to cause a stir in some quarters of the political landscape, but it is precisely this resistance that he seeks. “We are not at the level of other countries, we have not learned the leadership role,” he criticizes. He argues that Germany needs to become more capable of speaking and thinking, to develop a better culture of debate and, above all, an intellectual leadership role.
The fact that Germany was wrong on all important issues of the recent past upsets the top economist: Putin’s assault on Ukraine – it happened. Ukraine’s defense capability – it held. The indispensability of Russian gas for the national economy – averted. German policy was wrong three times. “Mistakes will continue to happen in the future, but then preferably at a higher level.”
More international presence is his second major goal as the new IfW president. The future of globalization and the world economic order must be discussed with international strategic partners in a non-dogmatic, research-based manner at eye level.
This is where Africa comes into play, to which the IfW has dedicated its own program. The Kiel Institute Africa Initiative aims to develop solutions on how the continent’s opportunities can be better weighted against negative fears. The experts want to understand better what impact China’s involvement in Africa actually has. The economic science cluster Africa Research analyses companies and their market potential, trade and investment policy, public finances and macroeconomic development as a whole. Research conducted jointly with African partners, the results of which are to be incorporated into German and European African policy.
Schularick attests to Germany’s approach on the continent so far – not very diplomatically – disinterest, a lot of warm words and proclamations, and too much short-term thinking. Germany must not fall back into a development model primarily interested in exploiting raw materials. “The raw materials then come from Africa, and we have the green products and jobs – that’s not how it should be.”
Schularick believes that the key question of whether the race for Africa can still be won against China or Russia has not yet been decided. Ultimately, Russia has nothing to offer except weapons and kleptocracy. And as far as China is concerned, Germany must confidently highlight the dependencies China is forcing African countries into. Instead, Germany could offer a freedom-oriented development model, politically and socially sustainable: “How can we use our development proposals to support the desire for freedom that also exists in Africa?” Harald Prokosch
China’s Zhang Linyan and England’s Rachel Daly fight for the ball. China’s women are much better at football than the men. They were even runners-up in the 1999 World Cup. But this year, the Chinese women’s journey to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand ended prematurely. They lost their match against England by a clear 1:6.
From student to master: Chinese carmakers have spent decades trying to learn from the car nation Germany. However, when it comes to building intelligent EVs, Volkswagen is now getting help from a Chinese manufacturer and taking a stake in the EV start-up Xpeng for 700 million euros.
What seems like a defeat for Volkswagen could turn out to be a stroke of luck, writes Joern Petring in his analysis. The company, founded only nine years ago, brings everything to the table that the German company lacks in its race to catch up on the electric market: A fast-charging electric platform and modern software. Investors seem pleased with the cooperation: Xpeng shares skyrocketed by more than 50 percent within a week.
Meanwhile, the German government’s China Strategy, presented in mid-July, keeps experts busy. For instance, it is still unclear what consequences the strategy will have for German academia. Jeffrey Stoff, President of the Center for Research Security & Integrity (CRSI), warns in an interview with Michael Radunski against cooperating too closely with institutions that also have a military background. After all, he says, this is how China got its hands on hypersonic technology.
To some observers, it seemed like a surrender of the German car industry: Last week, Volkswagen announced plans to acquire a stake in the small Chinese EV start-up Xpeng (小鹏汽车 ). For 700 million euros, Volkswagen secured a five percent stake in the Guangzhou-based company. The Germans indirectly admitted that the company could not catch up on the electric car market without Chinese help.
At first glance, it seems hard to imagine that a dwarf like Xpeng could provide a significant tailwind for a giant like Volkswagen. Xpeng sold just about 120,000 vehicles last year, and VW about 70 times as many. And yet the investment in the company, which was founded only nine years ago, could prove to be a stroke of luck.
At least Volkswagen seems to have made a good choice from the available options in its search for a new Chinese partner. Admittedly, Xpeng is far from selling the most EVs in China. The undisputed leader is the Shenzhen-based BYD Group, which sold 1.86 million vehicles in China last year and the most electric cars in the world. Electric pioneer BYD is expanding out of its own strength and certainly does not need a partner like Volkswagen.
The situation is different in the second row. Several innovative start-ups are fighting for a share of the rapidly growing Chinese EV market. Xpeng, NIO, and Li Auto are the three best-known contenders. All three companies are considered strong marketers and drivers of innovation. So far, they are mainly targeting the premium segment. There is no doubt that they can offer their customers what VW has so far failed to do: a smart smartphone on wheels.
That is why VW is primarily interested in Chinese technology. Xpeng contributes to the partnership everything that belongs to the future technology of the car industry, including a fast-charging electric platform and modern software.
Like NIO and Li Auto, Xpeng is listed on the New York and Hong Kong stock exchanges. Investors reacted almost euphorically to the news that VW was acquiring a stake in Xpeng. Xpeng shares soared by more than 50 percent between last Wednesday and yesterday (Tuesday).
It is also clear that not only Volkswagen sees potential in Xpeng. The Germans are in good company as shareholders. Prominent Chinese and international backers of Xpeng include Alibaba and Taiwanese iPhone supplier Foxconn. Lei Jun, founder of the Chinese tech company Xiaomi, was also one of Xpeng’s early backers.
In 2018, Xpeng prestigiously unveiled its first production vehicle in Las Vegas, the SUV G. A year later, the company’s second model, the P7 electric sedan, was presented at Auto Shanghai. It was followed by the P5 and the SUV G9. Only three months ago, the SUV coupé G6 celebrated its debut, with which Xpeng aims to challenge Tesla’s Model Y.
Co-founder and CEO He Xiaopeng enjoys an excellent reputation in the Chinese tech industry. The former Alibaba man has already founded several companies, including UCWeb, a Chinese software and mobile internet service provider. Unlike Tesla founder Elon Musk, for example, He is not regarded as someone who makes promises that he can only keep with significant delay or not at all.
Last week, He posted a video on Linked-in showing him driving the Xpeng driving assistance system. This system is supposed to enable autonomous driving to the greatest possible degree. In the video, however, He did not overly praise the company’s system, NGP (Navigation Guided Pilot), but also pointed out its remaining flaws. At a construction site, he noted that the car was driving too cautiously and slowly. And when his car rushed through a puddle at the curb at high speed, the Xpeng boss spoke of a need for improvement.
He also seems to have struck the right note with the Chinese authorities so far. In June, Xpeng was the first company in China to offer its customers the use of the NGP system on some roads in the Chinese capital Beijing. The system can now be used on the highways and ring roads in the city center.
As an agile start-up with Chinese DNA, Xpeng has undoubtedly fared better than Volkswagen in coping with the high development speed in China. However, the company is by no means guaranteed to survive. Similar to NIO or Li Auto, sales figures are still far too low to stay in the black consistently. On top of that, a brutal price war is raging between EV manufacturers in China.
The cooperation with VW should give Xpeng tailwind in several respects. He likely hopes that Volkswagen will help him scale his business. Industry experts also believe that further financial injections from Volkswagen are conceivable.
The results of your recent research on scientific and engineering cooperation between China and Germany are scary. How dangerous is it to cooperate with China?
Well, it depends on the field, but in some fields, it’s pretty dangerous, for example hypersonics research.
You mean hypersonic weapons? High-end missiles, which only a few countries possess like Russia and China. Even the US does not have those missiles.
Yes, and one can argue that researchers from Germany (and other allied nations) helped the PRC develop hypersonic weapons.
How? Germany does not have hypersonic weapons.
Right. But there is a history of PRC researchers collaborating with scientists and engineers around the world that are working on applications that can be used for hypersonic weapons. China put more resources and capacity building into the development of its program and perhaps took some risks that other countries didn’t pursue to get where they are today. But this was enabled by the extensive research collaboration China has enjoyed with advanced nations like Germany.
But then it’s easy to stop: A simple ‘No’ to collaborations on hypersonics.
Unfortunately not, because many of the research fields are dual-use in nature. In the case of hypersonics, some of the research may also be useful for civil aviation and aerospace, such as engine designs and material sciences.
Okay. But, at least the results applied to hypersonic weapons are obviously dangerous. In your research, did you come across some areas that are not so easily identified as dangerous?
Some examples are speech recognition and signal processing for hearing aids. This is important and valuable research. But some of the PRC partners work for a division of one of the Seven Sons of National Defense universities, whose primary mission is to develop defense and weapons systems. That division conducts submarine warfare research for the PLA Navy. So China is seeking to apply signal processing techniques for defense uses such as submarine detection and underwater communications for the Navy.
How could such a collaboration take place?
Because there are no laws against it, not in the US or the EU. Our export control regimes generally do not apply to fundamental research.
The absence of restrictions has a reason: freedom of science. Are you suggesting an interference into the freedom of science?
Yes, there should be more restrictions, but I would not call that interference. Academic freedom does not mean freedom from responsibility when conducting scientific research. We have a collective responsibility to ensure that the work that we do isn’t used for military purposes or human rights abuses by adversarial nations.
Did those scientists help China on purpose or were they just naïve?
I can’t say what the individual motivations or level of knowledge of each researcher was. Generally speaking, there’s a lack of understanding or awareness of who you’re working with. And China sometimes makes that difficult to find out. There can be a lack of transparency, or deliberate obfuscation of what a particular department or lab is doing.
How?
There are different ways. It starts with a lack of any information in English about that organization.
Why should they? They are Chinese, working in China, so their website is in Chinese.
Fair point. But in other cases, websites are blocked from outside of China. Or they use innocuous-sounding English names that are just ridiculous. But the Chinese language indicates it’s a defense lab. That’s intentional.
And you expect, for example, a researcher in Jena to double-check whether websites are accessible from outside China, whether their content is in English and what the Chinese names really mean?
Of course not. It is unreasonable to expect individual researchers to conduct robust risk assessments and due diligence, or to understand the geostrategic implications of the collaborations or the intentions of the PRC.
So then?
First, we need better awareness of these problems and make more of an effort to know who we’re dealing with. This is different from working with scientists in liberal democracies. For example, scientists employed at one of the Seven Sons of National Defense universities; those schools have a primary mission to develop weapons systems. They do engage in other types of scientific research, but they have mandates to identify military uses of all STEM research conducted there.
Okay, awareness. But who is in the lead?
Governments can provide guidelines and restrictions on federal research funding. But even the US government can’t do this on its own. And Germany and the UK have discussed the need to build more competence on China to do this better.
Then who else could help?
We need civil society institutions like the nonprofit I created, along with other NGOs, think tanks and research institutions to come together and collectively build a knowledge base. My study is one part of this effort and is a microcosm of the collective efforts that are needed; I got help from another NGO, academia, and a think tank. This needs to be more systematized internationally, where institutions with unique knowledge and capabilities work together.
Coming back to China. In the past both sides have profited from science collaboration. What has changed?
China has changed in that it has become more authoritarian, more closed off, and more of a human rights abuser than ever before. Our responsibilities go beyond military and defense issues, such as ethics associated with mass surveillance applications. Working with institutions that support China’s public security apparatus is anathema to our values. In my study, there are individuals working with Ministry of Public Security organs and the People’s Armed Police. These are horrendous human rights abusers of the PRC party-state, and working with such organizations on principle is highly problematic. This is true even if the research is not ethically troublesome, such as public safety or fire safety.
So no cooperation with China at all?
We need to do more cost-benefit assessments. There are areas like climate science where the benefits to collaboration outweigh the risks. But we have to draw some redlines. For example, I don’t think we should be working with entities that are part of or directly support China’s defense industry, even in climate areas.
But one could argue that in the end everything in China is under party control.
Yes, this is a complex challenge. But let’s start somewhere because right now, China has unfettered access to the global scientific research enterprise. Let’s start with some high-risk categories that I describe in my book and work to understand where redlines should be drawn.
How pressing is the problem to put it?
My study on Germany indicates that the scope of risky collaborations is quite large. These are urgent issues; we can’t wait years to come up with policies. Otherwise, it will be too late, like in hypersonics where the PRC has already surpassed us and may no longer need to collaborate with us anymore.
Jeffrey Stoff is the founder and president of the Center for Research Security & Integrity (CRSI), a newly established US non-profit organization whose mission is to assist academic, government and private sector institutions in mitigating risks to the security and integrity of research from adversarial or authoritarian nations. His latest publication is “Should Democracies Draw Redlines around Research Collaboration with China? A Case Study of Germany”.
Sinolytics is a European research-based consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and concrete business activities in the People’s Republic.
Germany’s far north is known for its fresh breezes. Perhaps this will also be noticeable in political Berlin. The new president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Moritz Schularick, has made it clear where he wants to go after taking office at the renowned global economic research institute: To the premier league of think tanks. The research institute, which has been around for 100 years, is considered the prime address for matters of international economics and trade. But Schularick quickly realized that there is a big gap in issues regarding geoeconomics and international macroeconomics. And he wants to fill it with the IfW’s economic expertise.
To this end, the IfW plans to establish a second branch in the German capital, which will deal with precisely these topics and advise policymakers more closely. From Schularick’s point of view, better interlocking of top-level research and policy advice is essential to advance the global transformation processes in the world economy, climate and technology.
His assessment of Germany’s “lack of intellectual leadership” is likely to cause a stir in some quarters of the political landscape, but it is precisely this resistance that he seeks. “We are not at the level of other countries, we have not learned the leadership role,” he criticizes. He argues that Germany needs to become more capable of speaking and thinking, to develop a better culture of debate and, above all, an intellectual leadership role.
The fact that Germany was wrong on all important issues of the recent past upsets the top economist: Putin’s assault on Ukraine – it happened. Ukraine’s defense capability – it held. The indispensability of Russian gas for the national economy – averted. German policy was wrong three times. “Mistakes will continue to happen in the future, but then preferably at a higher level.”
More international presence is his second major goal as the new IfW president. The future of globalization and the world economic order must be discussed with international strategic partners in a non-dogmatic, research-based manner at eye level.
This is where Africa comes into play, to which the IfW has dedicated its own program. The Kiel Institute Africa Initiative aims to develop solutions on how the continent’s opportunities can be better weighted against negative fears. The experts want to understand better what impact China’s involvement in Africa actually has. The economic science cluster Africa Research analyses companies and their market potential, trade and investment policy, public finances and macroeconomic development as a whole. Research conducted jointly with African partners, the results of which are to be incorporated into German and European African policy.
Schularick attests to Germany’s approach on the continent so far – not very diplomatically – disinterest, a lot of warm words and proclamations, and too much short-term thinking. Germany must not fall back into a development model primarily interested in exploiting raw materials. “The raw materials then come from Africa, and we have the green products and jobs – that’s not how it should be.”
Schularick believes that the key question of whether the race for Africa can still be won against China or Russia has not yet been decided. Ultimately, Russia has nothing to offer except weapons and kleptocracy. And as far as China is concerned, Germany must confidently highlight the dependencies China is forcing African countries into. Instead, Germany could offer a freedom-oriented development model, politically and socially sustainable: “How can we use our development proposals to support the desire for freedom that also exists in Africa?” Harald Prokosch
China’s Zhang Linyan and England’s Rachel Daly fight for the ball. China’s women are much better at football than the men. They were even runners-up in the 1999 World Cup. But this year, the Chinese women’s journey to the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand ended prematurely. They lost their match against England by a clear 1:6.
