Trade, climate change and the war in Ukraine are on the agenda as Scholz meets Li on his first official trip abroad.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has received Chinese Premier Li Qiang with military honors in Berlin.
Li, who is on his first trip abroad since taking office, is expected to discuss trade, climate change and the war in Ukraine with Scholz on Tuesday.
The Berlin meeting is the seventh time Germany and China have held high-level government consultations and comes a day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken met Chinese President Xi Jinping, signaling a Beijing’s effort to reach out to the West and improve frozen relations. .
Li, a former Shanghai Communist Party secretary who took office in March as China’s No. 2 official, met German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier on Monday and also had dinner with Scholz at the chancellery.
Scholz greets Li on the day of the German-Chinese government consultations [Nadja Wohlleben/Reuters]
Germany is keen to maintain good ties with China, its main trading partner, despite wariness over Beijing’s growing assertiveness and refusal to criticize Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Germany’s recently published national security strategy describes China as “a systemic partner, competitor and rival”.
Scholz has said he wants to avoid over-reliance on Chinese trade and diversify Germany’s supply of key goods, an approach he called “de-risking,” while rejecting the idea of ”decoupling” China.
The position was echoed last month by the Group of Seven’s major industrial powers, most of which rely heavily on trade with China.
He told Germany’s top CEOs on Monday that a lack of cooperation was the biggest risk.
“We must not artificially exaggerate ‘dependence’, or even simply equate interdependence with insecurity,” he told the top German business official, according to the official Xinhua news agency.
“The lack of cooperation is the biggest risk, and the lack of development is the biggest insecurity,” he added.
Climate change
Germany has recognized that major global issues such as climate change can only be solved together with China, and the official motto of Tuesday’s meeting is “Acting sustainably together.”
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said last week that the choice of Germany as Li’s first stop “fully reflects the great importance China attaches to China-Germany relations.”
He said China hoped to “send positive signals to the world to strengthen dialogue and cooperation” and come together to address challenges “to promote the prosperity and development of the world economy.”
After visiting the largest economy in the European Union, Li will travel to France, the second largest, where he will attend the “Summit for a New Global Financing Pact”, which is held at the initiative of French President Emmanuel Macron.
