No other current European leader has visited China as often as German Chancellor Angela Merkel who is paying the seventh visit of her chancellorship to China now.
US President Barack Obama has visited China only once, in 2009.
For Merkel, who has led the German government since 2005, establishing an extensive diplomatic relationship between China and Germany is a core issue. The frequency of visits among officials from the two countries shows the feeling is mutual.
China is a key market for German exports including cars (and a key supplier of consumer goods to Germany). But Germany has also displayed increasing assurance in the role of mediator between China and the United States, whose Asian allies are wary of China’s growing power.
Merkel’s visit, which began yesterday, climaxes today with political meetings in Beijing. It ends tomorrow.
She is to meet Prime Minister Li Keqiang before calling upon the president and paramount leader, Xi Jinping.
Crises in Ukraine, Syria and Africa; the ongoing rows over the nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea; and the future of Afghanistan will all get an airing.
The chancellor is likely to face Chinese questions about how the European Union is going to shake off the eurozone slump and widespread voter malaise shown by European elections in May.
The Chinese and Germans, who are both fond of jubilees, have declared next year “Innovation Year”.
It sounds innocuous, but there are touchy issues to be settled. China is likely to associate innovation with science and technology, whereas Germany will likely to insist that innovation includes modernising the legal, social welfare and education systems.
Berlin officials’ diaries include three top-level meetings with Beijing in the space of the seven months starting in April and extending through October.
Germany’s foreign and economics ministers, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel, were in Beijing in April. Meanwhile, top Chinese cabinet members will fly to Berlin to meet Merkel’s cabinet on October 10.
Sebastian Heilmann, director of the Mercator Institute of Chinese Studies (Merics) in Berlin, says the crux of the two nations’ relations is that do not just take place between diplomats, but also at institutional events where experts meet regularly.
When the top politicians can’t talk, such as during last year’s change of leadership in China, those experts quietly keep on meeting.
Chinese politicians were furious when Merkel met with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan religious leader, in her office in 2007. The top-level relationship was later patched up, but Heilmann says the expert-level contacts at that time in fact never stopped.
Germany often tries to keep sensitive discussions out of the public eye, in an attempt to speak frankly about touchy issues like human rights issues or to request releases of political detainees.
Berlin argues that these discussions will bear no fruit if they are carried on in public, whereas critics charge that German officials only pay lip service to human rights and tone down criticism for the sake of doing business.
