China, Germany show higher mutual trust amid fraught Beijing-Washington ties
As bilateral ties between China and the US spiral downward and the world’s worries about being involved increase, Europe has found itself standing in a worrisome situation of trying to strike a balance between the world’s two biggest economies. Although facing unprecedented pressure from the US, some far-sighted European leaders clearly see EU’s opportunity amid fraught China-US ties and they insist in improving China-EU cooperation with pragmatic diplomacy, experts said.
China’s relationship with Germany,
which is considered a cooperation model between big economies, has again demonstrated promising cooperation and understanding that injects hope to the world experiencing more turmoil than ever.
Amid a global uncertainty and COVID-19 pandemic, China and Germany have shown higher mutual trust to each other in recent months. For example, China started a “fasttrack” procedure to allow employees of German companies to reenter China on a special flight; and German leaders refuse to join the US in besieging China on the proposed G7 summit, they noted.
President Xi Jinping and German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday had their third telephone conversation since the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak, in which Xi said China is ready to work with Germany and EU to create greater global certainty.
Xi told Merkel that China will remain committed to further opening up to and expanding cooperation with the rest of the world, and will continue to create a favorable environment for German enterprises to increase investment in China.
The Chinese president also said he is confident that ChinaGermany cooperation will play its due role in helping pull the world out of the economic recession at an early date, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
Merkel also said Germany hopes to maintain dialogue with China and boost cooperation on a broad range of fields and issues, and also stands ready to keep close communication with China to realize the important events on the Germany-China and EU-China agenda, and push for higherlevel development of GermanyChina and EU-China ties.
Chinese experts said Germany will assume the European Union’s rotating presidency next month, and Merkel’s recent remarks on China and the US show that although facing unprecedented pressure from the US, Germany and EU would have more vibrant and diverse cooperation with China.
EU leaders also know that EU will have more markets in China and a unique political position as an important global player as China-US ties remain low, as following the US attack on China will do them no good, experts said.
Cui Hongjian, director of EU Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Thursday that Germany has been striving to play as a bellwether in leading a positive momentum in cooperation between China and Europe. Although criticism against China has been fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic in some European countries, Germany were relatively restrained.
Merkel, who is considered Europe’s most powerful politician, has refused US President Donald Trump’s invitation to attend the G7 summit to be held in Washington.
A senior German official was cited anonymously in a report of the New York Times on Tuesday as saying that Merkel did not want to be part of an antiChina display. The NYT report said that America’s traditional allies in Europe are “turning their backs” on Trump.
Gradually siding with China
The current strained ChinaUS ties seem to put Europe into a difficult situation – facing unprecedented pressure from the US to follow its attack against China, while knowing that choosing any side will surely undermine Europe’s interests, experts said.
Shi Mingde, a former Chinese ambassador to Germany, told the Global Times on Thursday that Germany may swing back and forth between ideology and pragmatism.
“But the two sides will eventually settle their differences as stability and pragmatism remain the cornerstone of the bilateral relationship,” Shi said.
Cui noted that after so many years of cooperating with China, Europe has also learned that pragmatism is the ultimate rule to maintain a sound multilateral relationship. For example, when the US was rancorous over Hong Kong issues, Europe echoed it but did not take concrete actions against China or commit anything to sour its relations with China.
Unlike the US and the UK which stood out to oppose China’s passage of a national security law to fix loopholes in its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and threatened to impose sanctions on China, Bloomberg reported on May 29 that EU member states expressed just “grave concern” over the law.
Europe is waking up after its economies suffered a heavy blow from the pandemic, and realized that it should shoulder the responsibility of stabilizing the turbulent international political atmosphere, and push forward cooperation with China, Cui said.