© REUTERS/Aly Song

The coronavirus pandemic is a prime example of what former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan described as “problems without passports.” Highly infectious diseases do not care much about national border guards holding up stop signs. To fight their spread and their effects, we depend on the cooperation of all states, no matter which political differences otherwise separate them. To this end, China is of central importance. This also applies to other global public goods, most prominently controlling the climate crisis: without China—which represents one-fifth of the world’s population and already has higher CO2 emissions than Europe and the US combined—there is no solution.

We must step up cooperation with China on global public goods. That does not mean, however, that we have to curry favor with Beijing to do so. China has a strong interest of its own in cooperating on global challenges, as it is also heavily affected by pandemics and the effects of the climate crisis. We therefore can and should vigorously defend our interests in what is a competition of systems with authoritarian state capitalism, while at the same time intensifying cooperation on global challenges. With regard to COVID-19, this means: we can take a strong stand against anti-Chinese racism, recognize the suffering and achievements of Chinese citizens in the fight against the coronavirus, and promote cooperation between government agencies and experts without making ourselves the mouthpiece of the Communist Party of China (CPC) narrative.

A Disinformation Campaign

The official Chinese narrative is clear. For the Chinese newspaper People’s Daily, the fight against the virus highlights “the obvious superiority of the leadership of the Communist Party and the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.” The Central Propaganda Department recently published a hagiographic book entitled A Battle Against Epidemic: China Combatting Covid-19 in 2020. According to an announcement by the Xinhua News Agency, the book—which is to be published in English and other foreign language editions—shows how President Xi Jinping has demonstrated “his commitment to the people, his far-reaching strategic vision. and outstanding leadership as the leader of a major power” in the fight against the virus.

Internationally, Beijing is conducting an aggressive campaign against all those who have criticized the lack of transparency in the actions of the Chinese government. In Nepal, for example, the Chinese ambassador attacked a newspaper for publishing a critical guest commentary on the lack of openness and trust in the Chinese government at the beginning of the epidemic. Beijing aggressively went after Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa and also expelled three Wall Street Journal journalists from the country because the newspaper published a commentary with the historically charged title “China as the True Sick Man of Asia.”

The Chinese government also ensured that Taiwan was not allowed to sit at the table at World Health Organization (WHO) crisis meetings. Senior Chinese diplomats have pursued a disinformation campaign spreading conspiracy theories about the US military as the source of the new coronavirus. Against this backdrop, the way WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is attempting to curry favor with Beijing is fundamentally misguided. The WHO chief is on record saying that “China is setting a new standard for the response to an outbreak;” he has also praised the government for its “transparency.” Ghebreyesus’ adviser Bruce Aylward, who led a WHO delegation to the Hubei crisis province, is also heaping praise, particularly with regard to China’s use of technology. In a recent interview, he refused to answer a question on Taiwan’s corona response, instead insinuating that Taiwan is just a province of China. There should not be any place for sycophancy when dealing with Beijing when it comes to how to respond to pandemics.

The same principle should apply to climate protection: we should seek cooperation with China without shying away from confrontation on other issues—be they technology, security, trade practices, or human rights. But that is exactly what some voices on both sides of the Atlantic suggest. Stephen Wertheim, one of the prominent left-wing foreign policy experts in the United States and co-founder of the new think tank, the Quincy Institute, said in regard to competition between the US and China: “The American people can live with an authoritarian China. They cannot live on an uninhabitable earth.” This suggests that the advancement of CPC-style authoritarianism should not be taken too seriously in the face of the climate crisis.

Self-Interest in Climate Policy

And with regard to criticism of China, BASF CEO Martin Brudermüller warned at the end of last year that there should be “a real, honest, social discussion about all the consequences,” making reference to the fact that many jobs in Germany depend on China. And he brought the climate crisis into play: “If China does not cooperate on climate protection, it will not work. In that case, they will continue to build coal-fired power plants.” This suggests that China will build coal-fired power plants out of spite when political relations become strained in other areas. But when it comes to climate protection, the CPC leadership acts out of self-interest, not because we in the West are tame and servile. The CPC elite is convinced that China will be hit hard by the effects of the climate crisis. In addition, there is pressure from the population that wants to see a reduction in air pollution (e.g., from old coal-fired power stations).

To be sure, security considerations do play a role in China’s climate policies. The fact that China is not giving up coal also has to do with energy security. Coal is readily available in China and therefore security of supply is less at risk. And anyone talking about decoupling China from the Western economy should be aware that this could be bad news for the production of low-carbon technologies, as researchers John Helveston and Jonas Nahm have shown. China currently produces two thirds of all solar cell panels, one third of all wind turbines and three quarters of all lithium-ion batteries. This dominant market position is also the result of violations of intellectual property rights and fair trade practices. Nevertheless, we should not completely forego China’s cost advantages in the production of these technologies—the cheaper the price at which these technologies are available in large numbers, the faster they will be deployed globally.

At the same time, Germany and Europe should not have any illusions about the hurdles for cooperation with Beijing on the climate crisis. A joint European-Chinese “Green New Deal” is not only a long way off because it is unclear whether Europe is serious about it but also because Beijing currently makes for a very questionable partner. At present, China is the largest exporter and financier of coal-fired power plants—often with outdated and thus particularly harmful technology. China’s gigantic Belt and Road Initiative has a very poor climate balance, and a merger of China’s and Europe’s emissions trading systems, as called for by climate researcher Ottmar Edenhofer, raises fundamental questions about how a market economy system could possibly merge with a state-capitalist instrument without ensuring the necessary transparency and trust.

Playing the Victim

Yes, we should try to intensify cooperation with China in tackling the climate crisis. But China will not export fewer coal power plants simply because we choose not to react if it violates our interests in other areas. We can and must do both: strongly defend our interests vis-à-vis China and lay the foundations for robust cooperation to tackle common problems.

That should also be the maxim in the arena of multilateralism. When accepting the Kissinger Prize at the American Academy in Berlin in January, German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned that “we should not fall into a new bipolarity, but rather try to include a country like China and treat it at least equally, based on our results and experiences with multilateralism.” China Daily widely distributed the video clip of Merkel’s speech on social media. It is easy to understand why the CPC organ was so enthusiastic about Merkel’s statement: it reinforces China’s victim narrative that others are treating the country unfairly in the global arena.

In her statement, Merkel insinuates that China is not involved in multilateralism and is not treated equally. Neither is true. China is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and is prominently represented in many UN special organizations with top personnel (no other country had more citizens as heads of UN agencies). Yes, China should have more weight in the IMF, but apart from that it is not treated unequally. Equal treatment doesn’t mean looking the other way but calling China out where necessary like we do with other countries. If China violates human rights, there is no reason not to say so.  Indeed, it tries hard to undermine the universal validity of human rights in UN bodies. And if China systematically violates the spirit of the WTO agreements through state-capitalist practices, then ignoring this doesn’t help multilateralism.

Meanwhile, Beijing has self-confidently established its own multilateral organizations, like the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB). Signature initiatives such as the Belt and Road Initiative are essential bilateral dressed up in a multilateral guise by bringing together all participating states at an annual forum in Beijing. During the current coronavirus crisis, China is delivering assistance to countries (also in Europe) with great fanfare. In a call with Italian Prime Minister Guiseppe Conte, Xi Jinping spoke of a “health silk road” China was seeking to build. This again is a purely bilateral initiative seeking to maximize Beijing’s PR gains.

China has so far refused to contribute to genuinely multilateral efforts such as the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) that is developing a coronavirus vaccine. Germany, Norway, and the United Kingdom have all generously contributed to this multilateral effort while Beijing (like US President Donald Trump) puts a premium on its own national efforts to develop a vaccine. China does all these things not because it has been excluded by the West, but because it is a status-conscious country, with the Communist Party’s unconditional claim to power as the central organizing principle.

Interdependence by Design

This insight must guide how we shape cooperation with what the European Commission last year in a strategy paper called a “systemic rival.” The current corona pandemic has reminded us of interdependence with China. But it’s crucial to realize that not all interdependencies are alike. With regard to diseases or climate, we deal with interdependence by nature. But the majority of cases are those of interdependence by design. Interdependence with regard to supply chains or technologies are the result of conscious decisions. Only now is it becoming clear to a larger public that we strongly rely on China for the production of active ingredients for medicines or protective gear.

This should give us reason to pause, because major powers like to use interdependence as a means of exerting pressure. The US political scientists Abraham Newman and Henry Farrell call this phenomenon “weaponized interdependence.” Germany and the EU would therefore do well to examine where dependencies and vulnerabilities toward China should be reduced. This is what a sound understanding of economic security demands. This means, for example, that we should not become dependent on Chinese technology for critical infrastructure such as the 5G mobile network. This does not have to be detrimental to cooperation with China in other areas, such as climate protection. Dependencies in sensitive areas only fuel distrust, which does not make cooperation in other sectors any easier.

Cooperation with Beijing on global public goods inevitably takes place against the backdrop of a competition of systems. Policymakers in Germany and Europe should invest in cooperation with Beijing on global public goods. But they should do so without any illusions that this will be easy and without any hesitations to vigorously defend German and European interests against Beijing’s authoritarian state capitalism.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

In May 2010, German President Horst Köhler gave a radio interview about the Bundeswehr deployment in Afghanistan. He argued that Germany, as “a country of our size, with a focus on exports and thus a reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that … military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests.” For Köhler, this was an issue of securing free trade routes and preventing regional instability—and thereby ultimately securing jobs and incomes in Germany. Hopefully, he added: “This all needs to be discussed and I believe we are not on such a bad path.”

Köhler would soon know better.

Rather than sober discussion, he faced a volley of immoderate criticism. The president of Germany, his critics said, was pursuing “economic wars,” calling for a “breach of the constitution.” A constitutional jurist recognized an “imperial tone,” reminiscent of the arguments for defending Britain’s naval supremacy in the 19th century. Köhler, deeply offended, resigned in a huff, an overreaction by a politically overtaxed president. But the episode also documents the immaturity of the German foreign policy discussion.

Köhler had put forward a simple, if crudely formulated, argument for using foreign policy to uphold economic interests. For his successor Joachim Gauck, the moral of the story was clear. In his most important foreign policy speech, five years ago at the Munich Security Conference, Gauck made the wishy-washy term “responsibility” the focal point. Germany had to take on “more responsibility” in the world. Then-Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen added their voices to the responsibility choir. Since then, “more responsibility” has become the gold standard in the foreign policy debate. Even Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was sure to keep her distance from Gauck’s ode to responsibility in 2014, called in her 2019 New Year’s Address for Germany to “take on more responsibility in its own interest.”

Responsibility sounds noble. No one will be accused of speaking in imperial tones or practicing crude power politics. Holding forth about responsibility has become the magic potion of German foreign policy. One employs the term to spread a diffuse feeling of well-being in times of geopolitical turbulence—and thereby dodges unpleasant questions about the difficult trade-offs between competing interests and about the search for the right instruments. That’s why we should say goodbye to the term “responsibility”—and argue openly about conflicting interests and the means to assert them.

Opposing Interests

That is not to say that Germany’s foreign policy interests are a secret: they are peace and security, prosperity, and democracy and human rights. One can invoke this triad in every soapbox speech—it’s almost as comforting as “responsibility”. But it doesn’t become relevant until interests compete with one another and the tools to achieve them are disputed. Only then is the quality of the foreign policy discussion revealed.

For world-champion exporter Germany, this is often the case when economic interests are assessed against the objectives of security and democracy and human rights. This is especially clear in relation to China, Germany’s most important trade partner. For a long time, Berlin acted under the assumption that Germany and China were perfectly compatible economic partners, that Beijing would continue to open up politically because of its global economic integration, and China did not present a serious challenge for German security. These assumptions proved false.

China has positioned itself as Germany’s main economic competitor and is aggressively pursuing its security interests. At the same time, its political system is becoming more and more authoritarian, and in many areas the human-rights situation has become dramatically worse. In this respect, the German strategy of pursuing ever-closer economic integration with Beijing and calling China a “strategic partner” looks highly questionable. Speeches about “more German responsibility” won’t help, but a more sober appraisal would.

In the short-term, German companies continue to make good money and a significant portion of their earnings in China; in the medium-term, they see themselves falling behind state capitalism. It is therefore vital to reduce German businesses’ dependence on China, take measures to protect the German economy from certain types of foreign investment, and strengthen domestic policy on innovation and industry. So far so good.

Things gets more controversial when it comes to security policy questions, like the role of Chinese tech firms in critical infrastructure like high-speed 5G mobile networks, as the Huawei case shows. Here there is a clear tension between economic and security interests. Huawei delivers affordable, modern technology for developing 5G networks. Yet installing Huawei technology also entails major security risks. In a conflict, the Chinese party-state could obligate Huawei to sabotage Germany. So Berlin has to make a decision. If national security is taken seriously, the answer has to be to bar Chinese tech firms from providing critical infrastructure. The precondition would be to have a debate focused on Germany and Europe’s claim to technological assertiveness.

Short on Solidarity

Competing interests also have to be evaluated in other fields. What is the right balance between advocating economic interests and standing up for democracy and human rights? Here we should explicitly understand the latter as interests and leave behind this talk of “interests versus values”. For example, Germany has to take a stand when it comes to Canada’s conflicts with Saudi Arabia and China. Ottawa is one of the capitals Berlin is courting for Foreign Minister Heiko Maas’s “alliance of multilateralists.” The alliance, according to Maas, is supposed to “show solidarity when international law is flouted on someone else’s doorstep.” China holding two Canadian citizens hostage as bargaining chips since December 2018 is a clear case of this. The party-state imprisoned the Canadians after Ottawa had arrested the daughter of Huawei’s founder on the basis of a US arrest warrant. But in the aftermath, Chancellor Merkel avoided taking a clear position in favor of Canada. Nor did Finance Minister Olaf Scholz mention the issue in official communications during his January trip to China.

It’s embarrassing enough that the German government withheld solidarity when Saudi Arabia, upset about critical comments about the human rights situation from the Canadian ambassador, overran Canada with threats and retaliatory measures. All too often, authoritarian regimes can rely on every country’s economic selfishness. Only when democrats stand together can they effectively defend themselves against the encroachment of autocracies like China and Saudi Arabia.

Another consideration is the extent to which Germany is willing to jeopardize its economic interests in order to stand up for human rights. The brutal oppression of Muslims in Xinjiang (with up to a million people in camps) is moving ever closer to the focal point of the public debate. Beyond the ritualized formats like the Human Rights Dialogue, how clear a position does the German political world want to take here?

Undeclared Interests

It’s also damaging for the foreign policy debate when interests are undeclared, or false interests are put forward. Nord Stream 2 is a prominent example of that. For a long time, German decision-makers, including the chancellor, dismissed the deal with the Kremlin for a new gas pipeline as an economic matter—knowing quite well that they were dealing with a highly explosive geopolitical issue. This smokescreen strategy has done enormous damage to German foreign policy. To Germany’s central European neighbors that vehemently oppose the project, like Poland, Berlin appears to be a calculating power player, one pursuing a “Germany First” strategy with marked cards. And yet there is no shortage of arguments for why the pipeline is in Germany’s interest and how Europe’s independence in energy policy can be maintained with Nord Stream 2.

Another example is the issue of refugees and migration. The political scene in Berlin is happy to put the label of “fighting the causes of migration” on every possible development and economic measure in Africa. Now, many African states are important growth markets. And measures to intensify economic cooperation are, for that reason, in Germany’s interest. But it is false advertising to sell these measures with the promise of reducing migration numbers. Development economists expect that the number of people with the ability and desire to migrate will initially increase as the level of economic development improves.

A Realistic View

There is also no clear communication of German interests with regard to the biggest foreign mission of the Bundeswehr, in Afghanistan. The population was initially sold three interests: the defense of their freedom, the promotion of human rights and democracy, and alliance solidarity with the US (as well as support for a UN mandate). There isn’t much left of the goals of freedom and democracy; yet German decision-makers have hardly communicated this so far.

But nothing demonstrates the weakness of the debate around German interests more than the discussion about nuclear weapons. Germany is confronted with an existential question here: how do we guarantee our security if the US nuclear umbrella starts to crumble? How do we react to the end of the INF treaty? From large sections of the political spectrum one hears cheap, convenient answers. Annalena Baerbock, the co-chairperson of the Green party, has called not only for the withdrawal of all US nuclear weapons from Germany, but also for Germany to pull out of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements. To the question of how she wanted to prevent Germany being vulnerable to blackmail from aggressive nuclear powers like Russia, she had no answer. Foreign Minister Maas is correct to back arms control. But one can only press ahead with arms control if one makes realistic assumptions about the interests of other parties. Mass recently said, “at the end of the day, everyone wants a world without nuclear weapons”—a daring thesis in view of the decision makers in Beijing, Moscow, or Islamabad. We need not only a realistic view of our own interests of but also of those of other countries.

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