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China’s foreign minister is expected to be in Berlin today. Officially, it should be about climate change and the corona pandemic. More crucial, however, are the uncomfortable topics that are not even on the agenda.
By Steffen Wurzel, ARD-Studio Shanghai
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi is traveling to Berlin today as part of a week-long trip to Europe. Above all, German companies in China expect concrete results from the visit. She is urging the Asian country’s leadership to relax entry bans for foreigners, which have been in place since late March due to the crown. Short-term business trips to China are not yet possible. Jens Hildebrandt from the German Chamber of Commerce in Beijing complains:
“There is a great need for short-term business trips. Without these trips, trade negotiations, for example, cannot continue and German experts who are supposed to put machines into operation in China, for example, still cannot enter. – Chinese trade relations “.
China is not expected to loosen entry bans for foreigners in the foreseeable future. On the contrary: China’s state media have been giving the impression that the rest of the world is sinking into chaos due to the Crown crisis for months, only in China is there peace and order. You have to protect the population from imported coronavirus cases.
Wang does not see the origin of the coronavirus in China
The crown crisis was also a problem during other stops on Wang’s European trip, for example in Oslo. There, the foreign minister again took the official line of leadership in Beijing, according to which the corona virus probably did not originate in China. “Well, China was the first country to report the virus to the World Health Organization. But that does not mean that the virus comes from China,” Wang said. Internationally, such statements cause astonishment, especially since the state and the China’s party leadership continues to prevent independent experts in the People’s Republic from investigating the corona outbreak.
Federal Chancellor Heiko Maas will host his Chinese colleague Wang on the outskirts of Berlin today at Villa Borsig on Lake Tegler See. Above all, Greens and FDP politicians demand that Maas also address inappropriate issues, including China’s state crackdown on the Uighur ethnic group in the Xinjiang region and China’s Hong Kong policy. The communist leadership’s “State Security Law” undermined basic rights in the self-governed city in a few months.
Violent dispute between China and the Czech Republic
Wang’s visit to Berlin is also overshadowed by a violent dispute between the Czech Republic and the Chinese leadership. It’s about Taiwan. Since the weekend, the president of the Czech Senate, Miloš Vystrčil, has been visiting the island republic together with a delegation of 90 people. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang then threatened the president of the Czech Senate from Germany. China’s government spokesman Zhao Lijian repeated the threat in Beijing yesterday:
“The Chinese leadership and the Chinese people will never sit idly by and tolerate the provocations of the president of the Czech Senate. We will make him pay a high price for his behavior.”
The chairman of the Bundestag’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Norbert Röttgen, described the threats by China’s foreign minister against the Czech Republic as a “diplomatic affront.” The background to the dispute is China’s uncompromising stance towards Taiwan. The communist leadership does not recognize the island republic and claims that Taiwan is part of the People’s Republic, which it has never been since its founding in 1949. The leadership in Beijing is forcing states that want to trade with China to renounce official relations with Taiwan. There is a growing international protest against this.
