Germany's Scholz Due To Arrive In Beijing Ahead Of Friday Meeting w/Xi

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz travels to Beijing with a delegation of German business leaders ahead of a meeting tomorrow with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meeting will be the first in-person talks between a major western leader and Xi since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Scholz has come in for criticism for the visit from the opposition in Germany, as well as the EU and other EU member states. French President Emmanuel Macron had touted a joint visit, but this was rejected by the chancellery.
• The German chancellor wrote in an op-ed for Politico & German daily FAZ that "If I am traveling to Beijing as Germany’s federal chancellor, I’m also doing so as a European. Not to speak on behalf of all of Europe — that would be presumptuous and wrong — but because German policy on China can only be successful when it is embedded in European policy on China.”
• Cracks already evident in Franco-German relationship at the top of the EU, and this visit - seen in Paris as a snub to Macron - is unlikely to resolve the deep-rooted divisions.
• Germany viewed by China hawks in the EU as overtly mercantile in its dealings with China despite clear G7 efforts to reduce reliance on Chinese-based supply chains. In the op-ed Scholz states that "It is precisely because ‘business as usual’ is no longer an option in these circumstances that I’m traveling to Beijing".