What is the meaning of the rapid economic rise of China for Germany? Three quotes show the whole Dilemma. “In the next decades, the power center of the automotive industry will be in China,” said the Volkswagen Chairman of the Board, Herbert Diess at the beginning of this week in Beijing. “Between our model of a liberal, open and social market economy, and China’s state-dominated economic system competition”, is in a controversial position paper of the Federal Association of German industry (BDI). “You must always remember that China is our biggest trading partner is – every word you have to put on the gold scale”, writes Volker Treier, foreign trade chief of the German chamber of industry and Commerce day (DIHK), of this paper.
Alexander Armbruster
responsible editor for business Online.
F. A. Z. Twitter
The conflict situation – the fact – is highly complicated. Longer German entrepreneurs complain about a lack of access to the market in the middle Kingdom and the strict requirements of the Chinese government. And their criticism is justified: Chinese companies are allowed to do in Germany and Europe more than Vice versa, even if the issue of majority stakes, most recently, something has been done.
Just right, the reference is to the fact that the Chinese state intervenes much more in the economy than the German or the British, French or American. He supports with huge sums of money and power rules of the economic sectors, in the view of the leadership in Beijing is significant.
900,000 jobs
The most well-known example: The Chinese Internet companies Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent have also become so large, because the American competitors are not allowed to offer out of the Silicon Valley in the middle Kingdom. Finally, the differences in the political System are glaring: The liberal democracies in the West, a One-party dictatorship, which deals with human rights and the country’s guaranteed right to freedom of expression is quite different in China.
it is True but also: so Far, German companies have earned under the existing conditions magnificently, all the car manufacturers. This is true not only for Volkswagen, but also for Daimler and BMW. The Chinese like German cars. And German machines. 900,000 jobs in Germany depend on exports to China, expects the DIHK-expert Treier now again. A lot of money in their own production, German companies have invested in China.
a thorn in the eye
What has changed compared to the time ten or twenty years ago, and not only in Europe but also in the United States triggers (not just Economic), is the technical progress in China. The country is no longer just the “workbench of the world” for rather simple products. It is a necessarily increasingly in areas that are more challenging and for a long time the domain of the company from the (old industrial countries).