German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has received a promise from China to increase imports of high-quality goods from Germany, during a visit to Beijing aimed at resetting relations burdened by a large trade deficit with the world's second-largest economy.
During his first visit to China since taking office as Chancellor, Merz, accompanied by a large business delegation, told President Xi Jinping that he wanted to deepen economic ties with China, which was Germany's largest trading partner last year.
"There are challenges that we need to discuss today, but the framework in which we operate is extremely good and we have cooperated very successfully over the past decades," he said.
Xi welcomed Merck's messages, as the German chancellor faces the demanding task of redefining economic relations that are increasingly unfavorable to German interests.
"The more turbulent and interconnected the world becomes, the greater the need for China and Germany to strengthen strategic communication and enhance strategic mutual trust," Xi said.
Merz's visit followed his warning earlier this month that the post-war international order, based on the US-Europe alliance, no longer exists, and that Europe must rely on its own strengths in a world marked by great power rivalry.
In an earlier meeting with Premier Li Keqiang, Merz said there were "very concrete concerns about our cooperation, which we want to improve and make fairer."
Merck's statements reflect Germany's long-standing concerns about what Berlin sees as an undervalued yuan, subsidies that distort market competition and overcapacity among Chinese exporters, who have built up a huge trade surplus with Europe's largest economy, reaching 90 billion euros last year.
He said the deficit had quadrupled since 2020 and said it was largely due to overcapacity. "Such a dynamic is not healthy," he told reporters after the meetings.
Germany's business sector is deeply concerned about its dependence on strategic raw materials from China, including rare earth metals and basic chips, after Beijing tightened export controls last year, causing upheaval among Western manufacturers.
At the same time, Merc's visit highlighted the vital importance of China's vast consumer market and the technological sophistication of its highly competitive manufacturers.
"We want Chinese investment in Germany," Merc said at a business event attended by senior German and Chinese business leaders from the technology and automotive sectors.
Li told Merc that China wants to cooperate in areas such as the automotive industry and chemistry, but also in new sectors, including artificial intelligence and biomedicine.
He also said that China is ready to import more high-quality products from Germany and encouraged Chinese companies to invest in Germany, according to a statement from the meeting published by the state-run Xinhua news agency.
"China will unswervingly expand a high level of opening-up and actively respond to reasonable requests from foreign-invested enterprises from Germany and other countries," he said.
The German delegation in Beijing included executives from 30 German companies, including major automakers like Volkswagen and BMW, which are feeling the pressure of Chinese competition.
China is seeking to portray itself as a reliable economic partner at a time when Europe faces new, less certain relations with Washington and vulnerabilities in supply chains, which came to the fore during a wave of trade turmoil last year.
The Chinese market, once extremely attractive to foreign companies due to its broad consumer base and growing purchasing power, has changed in recent years - a slowing economy has limited demand, while excess production capacity is increasingly encouraging domestic companies to seek opportunities abroad.
Li called on both sides to work together to preserve multilateralism and free trade, in a message interpreted as an allusion to US President Donald Trump's trade war, adding that they should "strive to build a more just and equitable system of global governance."
Despite calls for deeper cooperation, the agreements formalized by Merz and Li after the meeting were narrowly focused and related to sectors of minor importance to both economies.
The five signed documents include continued cooperation in the field of climate change and green transition, cooperation in the prevention of animal diseases and a protocol on poultry meat products, as well as agreements on sports cooperation in football and table tennis.
This is significantly less compared to Canada and the UK, which signed eight and 12 documents with China respectively last month during visits by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
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