Led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, the new German government has taken office, pledging to re-evaluate its relationship with China.
Merz began his tenure with a speech to the Bundestag that contained an explicit reference to China and the risks embedded in its foreign policy agenda.
Reiterating his concerns over the deepening alignment between Moscow and Beijing, Merz emphasized the need to exert pressure on China to accelerate progress toward peace in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
Merz showed a clear intent to break away from the previous government’s agenda, which had combined a hesitant approach to arming Ukraine with a conciliatory stance toward Beijing.
In contrast to its predecessor, the new government is demonstrating clear awareness of the risks tied to over-reliance on China. This shift reflects a deeper recognition of the complex and interlinked challenges Beijing poses to Western democracies.
On the economic front, which is tightly linked to security, Merz has stressed the need to pursue derisking to bolster resilience and the stability of the European supply chain. Therefore, it is not surprising that Merz strongly advocated for eschewing “trade wars” with the US by forging a united front to address the many challenges posed by China.
Acknowledging that China has emerged as an industrial competitor, Germany is increasingly aware of the need to act with foresight to prevent reliance on the Asian power.
Ensuring this does happen is a key foreign policy hurdle for the Merz government, as it faces the difficult task of balancing Germans’ aspirations for their nation to return to economic prominence with demands from certain industrial and corporate circles to maintain strong connections with Beijing. The latter is the main impediment to fully implementing a strategy to lessen Germany’s strategic reliance on China.
The demand for a “realistic” approach — explicitly voiced by a portion of the German industrial sector — contradicts the nation’s industrial interests. Even from a purely pragmatic standpoint, the idea of ever-closer relations implies a progressive surrender to Beijing’s automotive (and other) industry giants. Growing economic and commercial ties with China would lead to increased dependence, thereby undermining German industry.
The German government aims to foster an internal EU consensus on the need for a unified stance toward China and the multifaceted challenges it poses. The lack of a united front — largely attributable to the stance of Beijing’s allies in the EU — constitutes the primary impediment to achieving this objective. While recognizing the complexities of forging a unified EU policy on China, the new German government is focused on establishing the premises domestically for a revised approach — one that prioritizes de-risking from Beijing.
A key priority for the German government is to build consensus with the industrial and broader business community to chart a path toward restoring its dwindling economic importance. Given the deep interdependence between economic and security domains, Germany fully understands the need for a more integrated approach. Economic exposure and supply chain vulnerabilities are not just commercial concerns, they are the prelude to strategic reliance, from which it becomes progressively harder to extricate oneself.
This is why the German government sees the current moment as a historic opportunity. Breaking away from the perilous course of the past few decades is seen as essential to getting back on the right track.
Achieving this objective is just one of the many significant challenges confronting the Merz administration.
Michele Maresca is an analyst at Il Caffe Geopolitico, an online international law journal, and the think tank Geopol21.
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