What Scholz should bear in mind on his trip to Beijing

Olaf Scholz will be in Beijing this weekend, making the first visit of a western leader to China since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. What might at any other time be regarded as a routine piece of diplomatic outreach is instead a matter of deep concern.

China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has just cemented his position as dictator-for-life at the Chinese Communist party’s 20th congress. Beijing has followed this up with a series of high-profile visits from countries taking Chinese money for major infrastructure projects. The President of Vietnam arrived on Monday, the Presidents of Tanzania and Pakistan on Wednesday. This will culminate in Scholz’s arrival, the first G7 leader to accept Xi’s invitation. China’s sphere of influence is truly global.

The German Chancellor arrives with what his critics in Berlin describe as a ‘gift to China’ – a deal whereby the Chinese state-owned shipping giant Cosco is to be granted a 25 per cent stake in Hamburg’s container port, against the advice of several of his ministers. Scholz’s only concession was to knock down the proportion of shares to be sold to the company from 35 per cent to 25. Chinese state media have praised him for returning to Merkel-style deal-making politics.

Scholz’s arrival in Beijing with a planeload of businessmen is reminiscent of the overtures made by David Cameron and George Osborne in 2015. They had hoped to open up China for British investment, thereby becoming this newly liberalising giant’s best friend in the West. This looked possible under Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, who spoke about China’s ‘peaceful rise’. But it quickly became clear that Xi would be a different kind of leader.

Xi’s China isn’t the one that Hu envisaged – and in no way is this more clearly symbolised than in Hu’s forced removal, at Xi’s command, from the recent party congress. The world now knows a lot more about Beijing’s systematic repression of Uighurs, and Xi has spoken directly about using his belt-and-road investment initiative as a means to project Chinese power across all continents. Chinese money comes with strings attached: we can be sure, for example, that the Dalai Lama will not be received in Germany any time soon. Nor will Berlin allow Taiwan’s trade office to bear that country’s name, as Lithuania has done.

China imposed a customs block on Lithuania as punishment: proof that Beijing will use trade as leverage where it can. This is the dilemma for any western country cutting deals with China: it’s never just about money. It is about signing up to ‘good relations’ which are defined by an unspoken code of behaviour. The Nord Stream project to send more Russian gas to Germany was never just about energy – but it seems that Scholz is learning this lesson very slowly.

Xi’s authoritarian turn can be seen as a reason for more dialogue, not less. After all, Richard Nixon visited China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, a hand of friendship at a highly unlikely time, intended to show communist officials and the Chinese people a different way of life. In Vladimir Putin we have seen the dangers of a leader who shuts himself away with no interest in outside information. As Xi surrounds himself with only acolytes, constructive and clear communication between the West and China has become even more important. Western influence – and intelligence – may prevent an ageing dictator making stupid and dangerous decisions.

A broader danger is that China and Russia believe an exhausted, debt-addled West can be bought, and western leaders will look the other way when outrages are committed. Scholz’s visit may well send the message that western unity is a mirage and that Europe disagrees with America about the need to ‘decouple’ from China. The state-run Global Times newspaper, for example, reports that the Scholz visit is a blow for Washington and proof that Sino-EU relations are improving, ‘in sharp contrast to the US-led western hegemony’.

What Scholz and all western leaders should now be doing is stress-testing their policies against a scenario in which Xi invades Taiwan. At the very least, the West should impose similar sanctions against China to those against Russia. It would be a more painful retaliation (for us); China would turn the economic thumbscrews to break western resolve, but Germany must not let itself become vulnerable to such coercion.

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, it was possible to believe that China was on a journey towards liberal democracy – or at least a more benign kind of authoritarianism. That hope is harder to maintain now. At best, western relations with China will settle into a cool but businesslike arrangement. For that to happen, Europe’s leaders must show resolve. Before Putin invaded Ukraine, it was logical for him to believe that the West would huff, puff and then let him get away with it. That is, after all, what happened after Crimea. Under Angela Merkel, German naivety ended up being a major cause of the Ukraine war – a lesson that should have been heeded in Berlin. It would be tragic if Scholz were to repeat Merkel’s mistake now.