Germany’s Approach to China Is the Definition of Insanity

Once a model of geopolitical level-headedness, Germany has come down with Albert Einstein’s definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results. It’s difficult to see another explanation for Chancellor Scholz’s cozying up to Chairman Xi. Herr Scholz will land in Beijing tomorrow, days after Mr. Xi crowned himself emperor for life. The chancellor will ignore all warnings about dependency on Beijing, including the painful lesson Berlin has recently learned about dangerous liaisons with rising revanchist powers.In the last decade Berlin ignored warnings about its ever-tightening relations with Moscow, and now it faces a major energy crisis. Following Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Germany’s hoped-for gas supplier is under major sanctions and at war with much of the West.Winter will be cold. Mr. Scholz nevertheless is traveling to Communist China with eyes wide open — even as he seems more aware of the nature of the regime at Beijing than his predecessor, Angela Merkel, was of President Putin’s. “The outcome of the Communist Party Congress that has just ended is unambiguous: Avowals of Marxism-Leninism take up a much broader space than in the conclusions of previous congresses,” the chancellor wrote yesterday in an op-ed for Politico and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “As China changes, the way that we deal with China must change, too.”Traveling to China along with the chancellor are 12 executives of some of Germany’s top conglomerates. They aim to deepen business ties there despite Mr. Xi’s tightening grip over the economy, a “zero covid” policy that hurts the country’s commerce, and Beijing’s threat to amp-up aggression against its neighbors. In the first half of this year, German companies invested nearly $10 billion in China, a new high according to the German Economic Institute. Exports to and imports from China are also rising in what the Institute calls full “steam ahead in the wrong direction.”Germany, and many other European countries, have long been proud of efforts to replace dirty sources of energy with renewables. Rather than developing technologies such as fracking, the continent increased its dependence on imports of fossil fuels from countries like Russia.Similarly, Germany and others, including America, are now completely dependent on Chinese supplies of industrial metals and rare earths that are needed for wind turbines, electric vehicles, solar cells, semiconductors, and pretty much everything else in the current technology-based economy.Mining these substances, which are potentially quite abundant in Europe, is all but nonexistent, and investment in the field is slow. Instead, Germany is intensifying its reliance on Mr. Xi, who is happy to deepen the Western dependence on China. Mrs. Merkel ignored American warnings against completing the Nord Stream 2 gas line.Germany hoped the pipe would guarantee its energy for decades, even as President Trump was called a “Putin puppet” and his ambassador at Berlin, Richard Grenell, was pilloried for interfering in German internal politics by mounting a campaign to halt the pipeline project, warning it would give Moscow too much power over Europe. Similarly, Secretary Blinken, visiting Berlin today, spoke with his German counterpart, Annalena Baerbock, about the “global challenge posed by China, and our two countries’ shared commitment to upholding universal human rights and the rules-based international order,” according to a State Department readout of the meeting. The Green Party’s Ms. Baerbock, though, needs no convincing. The foreign minister has criticized the chancellor’s approach to China, saying that dependence on Beijing “based on the principle of hope” leaves Germany open to “political blackmail.” The Financial Times quotes Herr Scholz as believing, “You dance with whoever is in the room.”In yesterday’s op-ed, Mr. Scholz wrote that Communist China “with its 1.4 billion inhabitants and its economic power will play a key role on the world stage in the future, as it has for long periods throughout history.” He cites Germany’s “painful experience of division during the Cold War.”Yet Mr. Xi is eager to replace the American-led global order with Beijing’s system — the one that Mr. Scholz aptly described as “Marxist-Leninist.” Like Mr. Blinken, much of Ms. Baerbock’s criticism of Mr. Scholz’s trip is based on Mr. Xi not sharing “our values.” Other German critics warn against other ominous pitfalls.If Mr. Xi decides to invade Taiwan soon, as members of the Biden administration constantly warn, all agreements made with state-owned Chinese companies will likely expire. American and globally imposed sanctions would disrupt supply chains. Minerals would become too scarce to fuel everything from your iPhone to your neighbor’s Tesla. As the German domestic intelligence chief, Thomas Haldenwang, told the Bundestag last month, “Russia is the storm. China is climate change.”

Germany’s Approach to China Is the Definition of Insanity

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