China’s response will likely not be long in coming. The first comments on Joe Biden’s decree are already emerging from Beijing. The US President has directed his Treasury Department to prohibit certain American investments in Chinese companies. While Europe’s economy is not directly affected, the German industry remains skeptical about the establishment of this “very narrow but very high fence”, as expressed by Siemens CEO Roland Busch.
The EU should reconsider its own plans to introduce an outbound investment screening, advises DIHK foreign trade expert Melanie Vogelbach, who also called for close coordination with the US to prevent negative effects of the US plans on the European economy.
The goal of the European foreign economic strategy should be to accelerate the global opening of markets and investment locations instead of state-directed foreign trade. This could drive companies to diversify their supply chains, according to Vogelbach. In other words, she suggests more of a de-risking approach rather than the decoupling pursued by the US.
The EU Commission intends to closely analyze the announced investment restrictions for US companies in China. “We are in close contact with the US government and look forward to further cooperation in this area,” said an initial reaction from Brussels. The EU and its member states also aim to prevent the capital and know-how of European companies from enhancing the military and intelligence capabilities of actors who might use them to undermine international peace and security.
But how will the conflict between the US and China progress? This has been analyzed by Finn Mayer-Kuckuk.
The White House has decreed: Capital investments by US investors in Chinese high-tech companies will no longer be possible as of next year. The founding of joint ventures is also prohibited. The following sectors are affected:
The executive order officially affects “Countries of Concern,” meaning China. For instance, a US investment house like Goldman Sachs can no longer put money into a Chinese AI company like Baidu or Alibaba. The US will also no longer be able to provide funding for Chinese start-ups. Previously, such investments were routine.
The measure itself is not what causes the most concern in Europe. Its immediate impact will be limited, especially since it will not have a retroactive effect. European companies are not directly affected.
But indirectly, the indefinite continuation of the trade conflict will have global repercussions. China, in turn, will respond with a trade measure, as it has done every time after US sanctions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing already complained on Thursday about being the victim of “economic coercion” by the United States.
Moreover, the tone of the decree does not bode well for the development of global trade in the coming years. Biden explicitly does not justify the measure on economic grounds but as a political matter of national security. He presents the investment stop as self-defense against the rise of China as a technological rival.
The decrees reveal with astonishing candor that the president considers the mere existence of a technically equal great power dangerous in itself, that the USA should and must defend its lead by all means. This confirms the Chinese perception of the West trying to keep its own country down, as the Foreign Ministry spokesperson also clearly stated.
EU trade politician Bernd Lange from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) views the sanctions quite critically. Lange, a Member of the European Parliament, is concerned about the arbitrary use of national security as a justification for trade barriers. “A completely unspecific use of this justification naturally opens the door to protectionism.” Lange sees a continuation of Donald Trump’s practices in this.
However, with each new round of the trade conflict, the agency of internationally operating companies shrinks. And the more consistently both sides reject their opponents’ technical products, the less European companies can offer uniform devices for the global market. If the basic version of a product contains high-quality US chips, a company must develop a version with Chinese chips for China. This risks splitting the global market.
Lange sees the decree as the next step in the escalation between the US and China and even “a new dimension.” He does not believe that Brussels should follow suit: “We in the EU have our own interests, and to that extent, we should not let ourselves be pressured and pursue our strategy autonomously.”
However, Lange believes that the measure makes sense from the US perspective: It brings Biden closer to two of his goals. He combines “the economic interests of limiting China’s competition to the USA as a business location with the geopolitical intention of depriving China of certain technological opportunities for political expansion.”
According to the statements of his officials, Biden indeed wants to achieve two things:
The new investment ban fits seamlessly into the White House’s list of trade measures. It also unmistakably bears Biden’s signature. While Donald Trump still focuses on old-economy products such as washing machines and steel, Biden primarily focuses on high tech.
However, there is also the question of who is hurting whom more. After all, the US financial sector has also invested in the fast-growing Chinese tech sector out of self-interest. China also tends to be inaccessible, but Western investments, in particular, have opened doors for decades and maintained the West’s information level about what is happening in China. Banning investment in Chinese tech companies almost sounds more like a sanction China could have imposed on the US.
The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development promptly suspended its aid, as did the World Bank, the EU, and of course, France. However, Niger is particularly reliant on Western assistance. The partner that has been crucial for the EU in curbing irregular migration from sub-Saharan countries had committed to providing around half a billion euros in aid from 2021 to 2024. This was intended to primarily advance governance and education.
With the day of the coup, all of this has fallen apart for the time being. Without financial support and development cooperation, Niger is heading for disaster, as Africa expert and economist Robert Kappel points out. The situation is still unclear. This also makes the timeline hard to predict. The longer negotiations are delayed now, the more firmly the coup leaders will be in control. Military threats and pressure on the coup leaders make the situation even more explosive. The result would not only be a significant worsening of the supply situation in the country, but also the danger of a large number of internally displaced people.
With its misjudgment of the situation in Niger, German foreign and development policy has suffered a remarkable setback. There was no shortage of warning voices, such as when former French ambassador Gérard Araud recently cautioned that “Niger is to France what Afghanistan is to the US.” He recommended to the French government in Paris that they normalize political and economic relations with former colonies and treat African partners as sovereign nations. Military presence only fuels the frustration of the local population over France’s colonial legacy.
From Kappel’s perspective, German policy has fallen into a “quagmire of ignorance“. Consequently, Germany largely aligned with France, which, however, pursued a completely different approach to cooperation between the two countries, focusing on economic exploitation.
The coup has revealed a double dilemma: The Western security approach has failed just as much as the development-oriented one. The narrative spread by the German government of “Niger as an anchor of stability” was wishful thinking. The Western Sahel policy, which ambitiously attempted to prevent the spread of fundamentalist and terrorist groups in a notoriously unstable region through military presence, has failed. The “democratic change of power” in February 2021 was praised everywhere, and the “stable conditions in the country” were hailed.
In reality, neither Germany nor France recognized the need for endogenous development aid. Kappel particularly sees France in a major crisis regarding Africa policy. Against this backdrop, it’s noteworthy that Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary at the BMZ, recently expressed the view in a post that Germany must now critically engage with France on these issues.
The lack of unity in the EU regarding a common Africa strategy also contributes to the chaos in the region. On one hand, the EU is a significant donor of development aid, but the EU countries disagree on the approach in the Sahel region. Former ambassador Araud calls it a “European failure”.
Africa expert Robert Kappel wholeheartedly agrees with this assessment. To this day, Europe has failed to design a concept for a mutually beneficial coexistence. Europe still possesses assets that can score points not only in Niger.
Development policy must finally be made in such a way that it sparks economic dynamism and creates jobs. Investments in education, start-ups, university and industrial cooperation are absolutely essential. Kappel agrees with former ambassador Araud that the West should not rely on military criteria. For Kappel, a new start in development cooperation with the African continent should look at economic dimensions and not be oriented toward the French model of Africa as a backyard.
It seems that Niger’s coup in Africa has triggered a fundamental debate on security and development policy that was long overdue. The West cannot develop anyone from the outside. Only endogenous development deserves this designation, that is, what people are capable of achieving by virtue of their minds and hands and which improves their lives. That is the lesson for development policy.
High hopes rest on green hydrogen: It is expected to help reduce emissions in the steel sector, find use in power plants, make shipping and – some hope – passenger transport more climate-friendly. But to meet future demand, electrolysis capacity will have to grow faster than the wind and solar industries have managed during their periods of highest percentage growth. This is revealed by a study published in Nature Energy, in which authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) were particularly involved.
The EU aims to produce ten million tons of green hydrogen by 2030 and import the same amount from abroad. To achieve this, electrolysis capacity would have to double every year from 2024, according to the study’s authors. Such growth rates are “unprecedented” for energy technologies, they write. They believe a “breakthrough” toward high capacity will not occur before 2038. They add that it takes time for high growth rates to lead to a high installed capacity of electrolyzers.
The authors warn that governments “urgently need to develop business models for investing in green hydrogen,” for example, through financial incentives or green hydrogen quotas. To ensure the simultaneous growth of hydrogen supply and demand, as well as the infrastructure for the use and production of hydrogen, “considerable coordination” is required on the part of policymakers. nib/ae
Even as a student, Kristina Lunz wanted to make a significant impact: with her media campaign “Stop Bild Sexism”, she protested against the “topless” women portraits in the German tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung – and was successful. “My desire to change things emerged from a lot of anger back then,” she says today. Shortly thereafter, she co-founded the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP), of which she is the co-executive director to this day. Lunz is now in high demand: She sits at the table with foreign ministers and heads of state, working to incorporate women’s rights and interests better into their policies.
The native of Upper Franconia studied Public Policy at University College London and subsequently pursued Global Governance in Oxford. After her studies, she worked for a human rights organization in Colombia and the Gender and Coordination Office of the UN Development Programme in Myanmar. “During that time, I could see how little attention women’s rights receive on the international stage,” she says.
During that period, the Rohingya genocide was taking place in Myanmar, during which women were systematically raped. This motivated Lunz to establish CFFP: “That’s when I felt the need to take the feminism that I had previously applied only domestically into foreign policy.”
When Annalena Baerbock became foreign minister, she announced her intention to shape German foreign policy in a feminist manner. A major success for Kristina Lunz, who coined the term. Since “feminist foreign policy” is now included in the coalition agreement, it has become both a buzzword and a contentious term.
According to Lunz, there are some misconceptions circulating. “I often hear that this is a Western concept that should be imposed on other countries – that’s nonsense.” Civil society efforts and struggles for women’s rights have existed in other countries just as long as in the West. “We owe it to women from Latin America that gender equality is enshrined in the UN Charter.”
Another misconception is that feminist foreign policy means placing more women in political positions. Feminism always involves a power shift, says Lunz. “Representation is an important aspect, but just one of them.” Amid all the criticism of the term “feminist”, the essence of feminist foreign policy is being lost. Patriarchal thinking, misogyny and homophobia are cornerstones of fascist movements and authoritarianism. A feminist civil society is the best way to prevent this.
The fight against the climate crisis also has a feminist component: “We see that it’s mainly women and girls who bear the costs of the climate crisis: 80 percent of climate refugees are female, and many of them experience sexual violence during their displacement,” says Lunz. This justice component is where feminist foreign policy comes in, says the CFFP founder.
Lunz’s work and the perseverance of feminists are slowly showing results on the international stage. “In 2014, Sweden became the first country with an officially feminist foreign policy. In 2022, there were seven; today, there are eleven states – that’s a significant achievement.” With an international shift to the right and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the concept of nonviolent, feminist foreign policy is being put to the test. Lunz remains optimistic: “As an organization – and also as an activist – we’ve achieved things that no one ever believed possible.” Svenja Schlicht
China’s response will likely not be long in coming. The first comments on Joe Biden’s decree are already emerging from Beijing. The US President has directed his Treasury Department to prohibit certain American investments in Chinese companies. While Europe’s economy is not directly affected, the German industry remains skeptical about the establishment of this “very narrow but very high fence”, as expressed by Siemens CEO Roland Busch.
The EU should reconsider its own plans to introduce an outbound investment screening, advises DIHK foreign trade expert Melanie Vogelbach, who also called for close coordination with the US to prevent negative effects of the US plans on the European economy.
The goal of the European foreign economic strategy should be to accelerate the global opening of markets and investment locations instead of state-directed foreign trade. This could drive companies to diversify their supply chains, according to Vogelbach. In other words, she suggests more of a de-risking approach rather than the decoupling pursued by the US.
The EU Commission intends to closely analyze the announced investment restrictions for US companies in China. “We are in close contact with the US government and look forward to further cooperation in this area,” said an initial reaction from Brussels. The EU and its member states also aim to prevent the capital and know-how of European companies from enhancing the military and intelligence capabilities of actors who might use them to undermine international peace and security.
But how will the conflict between the US and China progress? This has been analyzed by Finn Mayer-Kuckuk.
The White House has decreed: Capital investments by US investors in Chinese high-tech companies will no longer be possible as of next year. The founding of joint ventures is also prohibited. The following sectors are affected:
The executive order officially affects “Countries of Concern,” meaning China. For instance, a US investment house like Goldman Sachs can no longer put money into a Chinese AI company like Baidu or Alibaba. The US will also no longer be able to provide funding for Chinese start-ups. Previously, such investments were routine.
The measure itself is not what causes the most concern in Europe. Its immediate impact will be limited, especially since it will not have a retroactive effect. European companies are not directly affected.
But indirectly, the indefinite continuation of the trade conflict will have global repercussions. China, in turn, will respond with a trade measure, as it has done every time after US sanctions. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing already complained on Thursday about being the victim of “economic coercion” by the United States.
Moreover, the tone of the decree does not bode well for the development of global trade in the coming years. Biden explicitly does not justify the measure on economic grounds but as a political matter of national security. He presents the investment stop as self-defense against the rise of China as a technological rival.
The decrees reveal with astonishing candor that the president considers the mere existence of a technically equal great power dangerous in itself, that the USA should and must defend its lead by all means. This confirms the Chinese perception of the West trying to keep its own country down, as the Foreign Ministry spokesperson also clearly stated.
EU trade politician Bernd Lange from the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) views the sanctions quite critically. Lange, a Member of the European Parliament, is concerned about the arbitrary use of national security as a justification for trade barriers. “A completely unspecific use of this justification naturally opens the door to protectionism.” Lange sees a continuation of Donald Trump’s practices in this.
However, with each new round of the trade conflict, the agency of internationally operating companies shrinks. And the more consistently both sides reject their opponents’ technical products, the less European companies can offer uniform devices for the global market. If the basic version of a product contains high-quality US chips, a company must develop a version with Chinese chips for China. This risks splitting the global market.
Lange sees the decree as the next step in the escalation between the US and China and even “a new dimension.” He does not believe that Brussels should follow suit: “We in the EU have our own interests, and to that extent, we should not let ourselves be pressured and pursue our strategy autonomously.”
However, Lange believes that the measure makes sense from the US perspective: It brings Biden closer to two of his goals. He combines “the economic interests of limiting China’s competition to the USA as a business location with the geopolitical intention of depriving China of certain technological opportunities for political expansion.”
According to the statements of his officials, Biden indeed wants to achieve two things:
The new investment ban fits seamlessly into the White House’s list of trade measures. It also unmistakably bears Biden’s signature. While Donald Trump still focuses on old-economy products such as washing machines and steel, Biden primarily focuses on high tech.
However, there is also the question of who is hurting whom more. After all, the US financial sector has also invested in the fast-growing Chinese tech sector out of self-interest. China also tends to be inaccessible, but Western investments, in particular, have opened doors for decades and maintained the West’s information level about what is happening in China. Banning investment in Chinese tech companies almost sounds more like a sanction China could have imposed on the US.
The German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development promptly suspended its aid, as did the World Bank, the EU, and of course, France. However, Niger is particularly reliant on Western assistance. The partner that has been crucial for the EU in curbing irregular migration from sub-Saharan countries had committed to providing around half a billion euros in aid from 2021 to 2024. This was intended to primarily advance governance and education.
With the day of the coup, all of this has fallen apart for the time being. Without financial support and development cooperation, Niger is heading for disaster, as Africa expert and economist Robert Kappel points out. The situation is still unclear. This also makes the timeline hard to predict. The longer negotiations are delayed now, the more firmly the coup leaders will be in control. Military threats and pressure on the coup leaders make the situation even more explosive. The result would not only be a significant worsening of the supply situation in the country, but also the danger of a large number of internally displaced people.
With its misjudgment of the situation in Niger, German foreign and development policy has suffered a remarkable setback. There was no shortage of warning voices, such as when former French ambassador Gérard Araud recently cautioned that “Niger is to France what Afghanistan is to the US.” He recommended to the French government in Paris that they normalize political and economic relations with former colonies and treat African partners as sovereign nations. Military presence only fuels the frustration of the local population over France’s colonial legacy.
From Kappel’s perspective, German policy has fallen into a “quagmire of ignorance“. Consequently, Germany largely aligned with France, which, however, pursued a completely different approach to cooperation between the two countries, focusing on economic exploitation.
The coup has revealed a double dilemma: The Western security approach has failed just as much as the development-oriented one. The narrative spread by the German government of “Niger as an anchor of stability” was wishful thinking. The Western Sahel policy, which ambitiously attempted to prevent the spread of fundamentalist and terrorist groups in a notoriously unstable region through military presence, has failed. The “democratic change of power” in February 2021 was praised everywhere, and the “stable conditions in the country” were hailed.
In reality, neither Germany nor France recognized the need for endogenous development aid. Kappel particularly sees France in a major crisis regarding Africa policy. Against this backdrop, it’s noteworthy that Jochen Flasbarth, state secretary at the BMZ, recently expressed the view in a post that Germany must now critically engage with France on these issues.
The lack of unity in the EU regarding a common Africa strategy also contributes to the chaos in the region. On one hand, the EU is a significant donor of development aid, but the EU countries disagree on the approach in the Sahel region. Former ambassador Araud calls it a “European failure”.
Africa expert Robert Kappel wholeheartedly agrees with this assessment. To this day, Europe has failed to design a concept for a mutually beneficial coexistence. Europe still possesses assets that can score points not only in Niger.
Development policy must finally be made in such a way that it sparks economic dynamism and creates jobs. Investments in education, start-ups, university and industrial cooperation are absolutely essential. Kappel agrees with former ambassador Araud that the West should not rely on military criteria. For Kappel, a new start in development cooperation with the African continent should look at economic dimensions and not be oriented toward the French model of Africa as a backyard.
It seems that Niger’s coup in Africa has triggered a fundamental debate on security and development policy that was long overdue. The West cannot develop anyone from the outside. Only endogenous development deserves this designation, that is, what people are capable of achieving by virtue of their minds and hands and which improves their lives. That is the lesson for development policy.
High hopes rest on green hydrogen: It is expected to help reduce emissions in the steel sector, find use in power plants, make shipping and – some hope – passenger transport more climate-friendly. But to meet future demand, electrolysis capacity will have to grow faster than the wind and solar industries have managed during their periods of highest percentage growth. This is revealed by a study published in Nature Energy, in which authors from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) were particularly involved.
The EU aims to produce ten million tons of green hydrogen by 2030 and import the same amount from abroad. To achieve this, electrolysis capacity would have to double every year from 2024, according to the study’s authors. Such growth rates are “unprecedented” for energy technologies, they write. They believe a “breakthrough” toward high capacity will not occur before 2038. They add that it takes time for high growth rates to lead to a high installed capacity of electrolyzers.
The authors warn that governments “urgently need to develop business models for investing in green hydrogen,” for example, through financial incentives or green hydrogen quotas. To ensure the simultaneous growth of hydrogen supply and demand, as well as the infrastructure for the use and production of hydrogen, “considerable coordination” is required on the part of policymakers. nib/ae
Even as a student, Kristina Lunz wanted to make a significant impact: with her media campaign “Stop Bild Sexism”, she protested against the “topless” women portraits in the German tabloid newspaper Bild-Zeitung – and was successful. “My desire to change things emerged from a lot of anger back then,” she says today. Shortly thereafter, she co-founded the Centre for Feminist Foreign Policy (CFFP), of which she is the co-executive director to this day. Lunz is now in high demand: She sits at the table with foreign ministers and heads of state, working to incorporate women’s rights and interests better into their policies.
The native of Upper Franconia studied Public Policy at University College London and subsequently pursued Global Governance in Oxford. After her studies, she worked for a human rights organization in Colombia and the Gender and Coordination Office of the UN Development Programme in Myanmar. “During that time, I could see how little attention women’s rights receive on the international stage,” she says.
During that period, the Rohingya genocide was taking place in Myanmar, during which women were systematically raped. This motivated Lunz to establish CFFP: “That’s when I felt the need to take the feminism that I had previously applied only domestically into foreign policy.”
When Annalena Baerbock became foreign minister, she announced her intention to shape German foreign policy in a feminist manner. A major success for Kristina Lunz, who coined the term. Since “feminist foreign policy” is now included in the coalition agreement, it has become both a buzzword and a contentious term.
According to Lunz, there are some misconceptions circulating. “I often hear that this is a Western concept that should be imposed on other countries – that’s nonsense.” Civil society efforts and struggles for women’s rights have existed in other countries just as long as in the West. “We owe it to women from Latin America that gender equality is enshrined in the UN Charter.”
Another misconception is that feminist foreign policy means placing more women in political positions. Feminism always involves a power shift, says Lunz. “Representation is an important aspect, but just one of them.” Amid all the criticism of the term “feminist”, the essence of feminist foreign policy is being lost. Patriarchal thinking, misogyny and homophobia are cornerstones of fascist movements and authoritarianism. A feminist civil society is the best way to prevent this.
The fight against the climate crisis also has a feminist component: “We see that it’s mainly women and girls who bear the costs of the climate crisis: 80 percent of climate refugees are female, and many of them experience sexual violence during their displacement,” says Lunz. This justice component is where feminist foreign policy comes in, says the CFFP founder.
Lunz’s work and the perseverance of feminists are slowly showing results on the international stage. “In 2014, Sweden became the first country with an officially feminist foreign policy. In 2022, there were seven; today, there are eleven states – that’s a significant achievement.” With an international shift to the right and Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the concept of nonviolent, feminist foreign policy is being put to the test. Lunz remains optimistic: “As an organization – and also as an activist – we’ve achieved things that no one ever believed possible.” Svenja Schlicht
