The new German Foreign Minister Wadfour was originally scheduled to visit China on October 26.
But he probably didn't expect this trip to be yellow three days before departure.
Then this incident became the biggest joke in the European diplomatic circle.
Even the Financial Times of the United Kingdom directly said that this was a super diplomatic disaster caused by the Mertz government.
Although it is said that there is no time for China to arrange talks, the most fundamental reason is that German politicians shout "China is in danger" there every day.
Then the good cooperation opportunities were lost in this way.
In fact, the reason why German politicians scream "China is dangerous" every day, the problem is that Germany's view of China is completely misguided.
The most intuitive manifestation appears in the diplomatic field. The new German Foreign Minister Wadfour's scheduled visit to China on October 26 was finally shelved. Behind this was a series of accusing remarks he made before his departure, including the so-called "support for Russia's aggression against Ukraine" and "proof of hegemonic ambitions."
The wave directly prompted Beijing's senior leaders to delay the meeting because of "other matters", and the German ambassador to China was also summoned by the Chinese Foreign Ministry.
Even more worrying, when foreign ministers were preparing for a visit to China, the most important German business leaders chose to stay at home.Unwilling to participate with them, this difference in action between government and enterprises reflects the deep tear caused by China policy in Germany.
Strong gestures at the policy level contrast with the actual dependence on the economic sector. The 2024 internal report of the German Federal Ministry of Economics has long pointed out that decoupling from China will increase the cost of the country's manufacturing industry by 18%-23%, but the argument of "de-risk" in political discourse continues to ferment.
In 2023, Germany carried out 37 investment reviews of Chinese companies, 19 of which were vetoed on the grounds of “national security” and most were not publicly supported by concrete evidence.
By October 2025, Germany further joined France and Poland at the EU summit to propose the use of trade "nuclear option" with China, and planned to launch the "Anti-Coercion Tool Act" to block Chinese semiconductor design software, battery raw materials and even photovoltaic patent licensing.
Hungary directly vetoed the proposal, Slovakia openly opposed it, while Italy worried that its red wine exports would be thwarted and the summit could only announce a “reconsideration”.
China-German bilateral trade volume in 2024 reached $ 2018.8 billion, of which Germany imports $948.3 billion from China and exports $1070.5 billion, the electronics, automotive, mechanical equipment and other pillar industries are deeply embedded in this trade network.
U.S. Honor Consulting Company data show that German companies will invest 5.7 billion euros in China in 2024, up 25 percent from the previous year, and the survey of the German Chamber of Commerce in China also shows that 92% of its members want to remain in the Chinese market, and many German companies account for more than a third of their revenue in China.
Supply chain dependency further highlights policy contradictions: 91% of the German automotive industry’s supply of rare earths comes from China, and the BASF Group has launched a “de-Chinese” assessment, but found that the cost of alternative solutions will boost by 47%;
The experience of German chemical giant Covestro is more representative. When China's Ministry of Commerce launched an anti-dumping investigation into EU-produced polycarbonate, the company's Frankfurt share price fell by 4.7% in ten minutes, and its market value evaporated by 2 billion euros.
Polycarbonate as a German advantage product, is widely used in car lights, cell phone shells, high-speed railway windows and other fields, while China's market demand fluctuations directly affect enterprise performance.
The European market, 90% of photovoltaic polycrystalline silicon depends on Chinese imports, 80% of battery-grade lithium salt comes from China, and the dependence of wind power and rare-earth magnets on China also reaches 70%, this depth of the upstream and downstream bonding of the industrial chain, making trade barrier policies often trigger counterfeiting.
In an article in the Frankfurt Report on October 16, China is rising to be a “dominant world power”, which is reflected in its position as a global industrial center, the construction of an independent digital standard system and the leadership of new energy technologies.
The author and expert on China at the University of Trier, Sebastian Hellman, noted that in a turbulent world, China’s predictability and cooperation gestures are gaining more recognition. Most countries around the world and many European societies have surpassed the popularity of China in the United States, while the US-European media often focuses on China’s weaknesses and masks the actual change in the pattern of strength.
Steingart further pointed out in his commentary that the root of the German diplomatic problem was not the change in China, but the distortion in the German view of China, which led to the political misfortune of the South and the North. Attempts to slow China’s development by imposing tariffs and imposing sanctions could ultimately damage Germany’s own interests.
This deviation in perspective is also reflected in the trade-off of international strategies. Germany is deeply dependent on the United States in terms of security, while America’s strategic goal is to contain China, which external pressure and the German economy’s high dependence on China form intrinsic tensions, causing its foreign policy to frequently show right-wing swings.
Behind Germany and France's promotion of the "nuclear option" against China, there is the consideration of using tough terms with China in exchange for the United States to reduce automobile tariffs. However, the reality is that although the Trump administration verbally supports it, it has passed the Inflation Reduction Act to tilt subsidies towards local automobile companies.
The U.S. Department of Commerce data show that the U.S. European car trade deficit has reached $62 billion in 2025, and if the EU raises tariffs on China, the German automotive industry will bear an additional $230 billion in losses.
The German Chemical Industry Association wrote a report overnight, pointing out that once China and the United States reach a compromise on trade, Europe may lose both China orders and cheap energy from the United States, falling into a situation of failure at both ends.
The reaction of German trade unions more directly reflects grassroots concerns about policy. When tough talk about China heats up, The trade union sent an email directly to members of parliament to warn that if the policy caused damage to the enterprise, the factory might be reduced from four-day working week to three days. This email was published on the front page of Bild, with the headline pointing out that "rice bowl is more important than slogan".
These concerns are not empty winds. Germany's machinery manufacturing exports have plunged by 19% year-on-year, while the case of France's nuclear power plant relying on China's supply for 60% of key components further reveals the general dependence of the European industrial system on China's industrial chain.
Even if the EU is trying to build an alternative supply chain, the incident that Finland’s rare-earth refinery was shut down due to technical flaws that led to radioactive leakage also shows the unrealisticity of getting rid of dependency on China in the short term.
Events such as the German ambassador to China being summoned and the foreign minister's premature visit to China are essentially diplomatic consequences caused by cognitive bias. Steinart asked in his article whether Germany, as a country that once relied on learning from the United States and Britain to rise, would still have the courage to learn from Eastern countries with different systems in the 21st century, rather than fall into the mentality of "punishing rather than learning".
Behind this mentality is the civilization anxiety of the western world in the face of China's rise. When China achieves modernization successfully on a non-Western path, the Western traditional narrative system is shocked, and measures such as tariffs and sanctions have limited economic effects, but maintain the illusion of a sense of moral superiority.
But the data and facts continue to show that China in the future fields such as solar energy, battery technology, artificial intelligence has catch up or even surpassed international competitors, and the global southern market demand for China's digital infrastructure continues to grow, these trends make the cognition and reality gap more and more obvious.
The Chinese Ministry of Commerce's anti-dumping investigation into the EU's polycarbonate production also reflects the rationality of the response from the side. The product accounts for only 17 percent of China's domestic demand, and the domestic petrochemical plants can add three months to fill the gap, which is in contrast to Europe's high dependence on key raw materials in China.
The German Economy Minister's public admission that "full decoupling cannot be tolerated" echoed the tough rhetoric of politicians and highlighted the policy's room for compromise in the face of practical interests.
When Hungary builds Europe's largest photovoltaic component base, when German enterprises continue to increase investment in China, market choices are clearly showing a different direction from political discourse, behind this direction, is the difficult complementarity of the Sino-German economy in terms of market, capital, R & D, industrial chain and so on.
The official source:
Economic and Trade Data and Cooperation: Economic and Trade Office of the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Federal Republic of Germany
https://de.mofcom.gov.cn/zdjm/art/2022/art_fd9af6aaf9004cf09571f1670892148d.html
German media analysis of China's rise and German policy: China Network (reported by the German "Frankfurt Report")
http://news.china.com.cn/2025-10/20/content_118131644.shtml
German enterprises' investment and confidence data in China: Xinhuanet
http://www.xinhuanet.com/20250426/f5416ba67a814f97be193e39c66ccd00/c.html