German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits the Bosch factory for hydrogen drives in Chongqing, China on April 14, 2024. Image Credit: Reuters
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for fair competition in trade relations with China while warning against dumping and overproduction while speaking to students in Shanghai on Monday.
Amid EU tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles and other trade-related tensions, Mr. Scholz is visiting China. The two countries are divided over how to deal with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“One thing that must always be clear is that the competition must be fair,” Mr. Scholz told students at Shanghai’s Tongji University, according to a German news agency. dpa.
“Of course we want our companies to have no restrictions, but on the contrary we will act as we demand here,” he said, adding that there should be no dumping or overproduction.
The European Union is considering tariffs to protect its manufacturers against imports of cheap Chinese electrical vehicles, which some fear will flood the European market.
The head of Germany’s auto industry association, the VDA, voiced opposition to such tariffs ahead of Mr Scholz’s visit. Hildegard Müller said in comments published Saturday to Welt am Sonntag newspaper that the tariffs would not help the European and German auto industries and could instead “quickly have a negative effect in a trade conflict.”
“The current deal with China will secure a large number of jobs in Germany,” Mr Müller said.
Mr. Scholz drew comparisons to reservations years ago, when Japanese and Korean automakers entered the German market.
“There was a big movement in the newspapers: ‘Now Japanese cars will come and clean’ – nonsense,” he told students at Tongji University. He said there are German cars made in China with Chinese manufacturers and at some point there will be Chinese cars in Germany and Europe.
Mr. Scholz began his three-day trip to China on Sunday in the industrial hub of Chongqing, where he and his delegation of ministers and business executives are the manufacturing base for a partly German-funded company and other sites. China’s auto and other industries.
He will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in Beijing on Tuesday, then return to Berlin later in the day.
Mr Scholz is expected to question Xi about China’s support for the Russian economy two years before Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Ahead of his arrival, the German leader posted on social platform X that he had discussed with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Saturday the “massive” Russian airstrikes on civilian energy infrastructure and declared that Berlin “stands unbreakably on Ukraine’s side”.
China has refused to criticize Russia’s aggression. Beijing maintains trade ties with Moscow and the two nations conduct joint military drills. A US intelligence report last week found that China had increased sales of equipment to Russia to aid in its war effort against Ukraine.
Berlin is worried about a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a self-governing island 130 kilometers (80 miles) off China’s coast that Beijing claims as its own.
Borders should not be “moved by force,” Mr. said to the students in Shanghai. Scholz said.
“We should not be afraid of our neighbors,” he said, stressing the importance of international organizations such as the World Trade Organization.
Despite political and trade tensions, China will be Germany’s top trading partner for the eighth year in 2023, exchanging 254.1 billion euros ($271 billion) of goods and services between the sides, slightly more than Germany did with the US but a 15.5% contraction from the previous year.
After becoming Chancellor at the end of 2021, it is Mr. This is Scholz’s second trip to China. His previous visit was in November 2022 and was a one-day trip due to the still strict COVID restrictions at that time.
It was his first visit since the German government presented its China strategy last year, which drew criticism from Beijing. Premier Li and a delegation of senior officials visited Berlin in June.