Germany pulling up the belatedly China trade policy vows 'no more naivety'

September 15, 2022: -On Tuesday, Germany’s economy minister said the government was working on a recent trade policy with China to decrease dependence on Chinese raw materials, batteries, and semiconductors, promising “no more naivety” in trade transactions with Beijing.

Sources told Reuters the previous week that the thrift ministry was considering a raft of recent measures to make business with China less attractive. This was the initial time the minister clarified the tougher line of living cracked into approach criteria.

Robert Habeck told Reuters that China was a welcome trading partner. Still, Germany could not permit Beijing’s protectionism to distort round and would not hold back complaints of human rights violations under the threat of losing business.

“We cannot permit ourselves to be blackmailed,” he said in an interview.

Habeck did not outline unusual measures in total but said they would include a closer breakdown of European Chinese assets, such as infrastructure.

China has been Germany’s biggest trade partner for six years, with volumes reaching over 245 billion euros ($246 billion) in 2021.

But the center-left government takes a harder line toward Beijing than its center-right predecessor, worried about Germany’s dependence on Asia’s economic superpower.

On Thursday, Reuters registered the economy ministry was considering measures including reducing or even scrapping investment and export guarantees for China and no extended promotion trade fairs.

Habeck said Germany must open up to new trading partners and regions as many sectors depended heavily on selling to China.

“If it were to close, which is not likely at the moment, we would have extreme sales problems,” Habeck said, which added the economy ministry was contributing to the new German-China policy, much of which is already in place.

“And from this, you will see that there is no better naivety,” he added.

Berlin also wants to examine Chinese investments in Europe more critically, adding that Europe should not support China’s Silk Road Initiative, which aims to buy up strategic European infrastructure and influence trade policy.

For example, Habeck signaled he was opposed to plans by China’s Cosco to buy a stake in a container operator at Germany’s Hafen Hamburg port, signaling problems regarding Chinese appropriation deals are spreading out from the technology arena into other industry sectors, such as logistics.

“I’m leaning towards the point that we accomplished allow that,” he said.