With their cynical approach to the People's Republic of China 🇨🇳 the four chancellors Schmidt (1974-82), Kohl (1982-98), Schröder (1998-2005) and Merkel (2005-21) have done Germany 🇩🇪 a disservice. There is much to be learned from their leadership failures. A short thread 🧵 /1
Chancellor Helmut Kohl is best known for his role in Germany's re-unification. Yet he also helped normalising the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) after the 1989 Tiananmen massacre. In 1995 he was the "first Western leader to visit a Chinese military base" /2 nytimes.com/1995/11/09/wor…
Kohl's visit to the People's Liberation Army 196 Infantry Division outside Tianjin was highly symbolic. It was a clear signal to the Chinese Communist Party that the atrocities of 1989 were no longer an obstacle to western business engagement with China /3 scmp.com/article/138269…
Under Kohl German China policy was increasingly driven by mercantilist considerations. Kohl helped to "[convince] a generation of German political and business elites that China held the key to Germany’s long-term prosperity." /4 politico.eu/article/german…
Kohl's successor Chancellor Gerhard Schröder went further. He relegated human rights concerns to a toothless 'dialogue'. In 2005 he lobbied to lift the European arms embargo, which he saw as an obstacle to deepening Germany's commercial ties with China /5 dw.com/en/schr%C3%B6d…
Schröder admired former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Despite retiring from front-line politics in the early 1980s, Schmidt exercised very problematic intellectual leadership in the early 2000s. Time and again Schmidt argued against China's democratisation /6 spiegel.de/politik/deutsc…
Schmidt argued that "in China all the prerequisites for a democracy were missing, there were no democratic traditions in Chinese history (author's translation)". He exaggerated the importance of Confucianism in Chinese political thought and practice /7 handelsblatt.com/meinung/kommen…
The German journalist Erling has portrayed Helmut Schmidt as part of the 'sceptic generation': Schmidt had grown up in the Third Reich; he was disillusioned, displayed a cynical attitude; rejected political visions and advocated pragmatism /8 welt.de/politik/auslan…
Erling critiqued Schmidt as an "authoritarian character dressed in the cloak of the sceptic. And therefore an admirer of all authoritarians in this world as long as they have power; and a despiser of anti-authoritarian democracy (author's translation)" /9
During a talk in 2012 "the former chancellor expressed his doubts about the export of Western democracy to the People's Republic". Gu Xuewu disagreed and told Schmidt that "a free system was always a better option than the naked exercise of power" /10 dw.com/en/magnet-chin…
Sieren has argued that "Germans should think hard about how to address [Schmidt's] legacy". Yet Schmidt's view of China was very problematic. He portrayed it in culturally essentialist terms. He also frequently gave the CCP the benefit of the doubt /11 dw.com/en/sierens-chi…
Following Schröder's election defeat in 2005 Angela Merkel began her long reign as chancellor. U-turn after u-turn revealed her lack of leadership. First she was in favour of nuclear energy, only to change her mind after Fukushima /12 dw.com/en/opinion-ang…
Merkel initially was critical of China and even met the Dalai Lama in 2007. Yet her biggest legacy will be the ill-considered Comprehensive Agreement on Investment #CAI. Merkel prioritised the bottom line of German conglomerates over any other concerns /13 spiegel.de/international/…
Under Merkel German China policy was effectively outsourced to the private sector. This opened the flood gates to corporate propaganda. In their blind pursuit of short-term profits economic elites distorted the German public discourse about China /14
Let me conclude with a brief summary. When the four chancellors exercised leadership they either normalised the CCP (Kohl), made the case against China's democratisation (Schmidt), or prioritised commerce over other enlightened values and interests (Schröder and Merkel) /15
There is now a lot to unlearn. Myths about the importance of China's market and misunderstandings about China's political system need to be busted. Academics and think tankers should help to inform a more critical public debate about China. Germany needs a reality check /16
The SPD foreign affairs spokesperson Schmid is right when arguing that “[we] need a real foreign policy for China — not just a business-oriented policy (...) We need to decouple our foreign policy from the commercial interests of big business” /End ft.com/content/0de447…
If you found the thread 🧵 about the four German chancellors’ cynical approach to China thought provoking please consider this thread from September 14, 2020. Here I write about the pitfalls of Germany’s single-minded pursuit of foreign trade promotion (Außenwirtschaftsförderung)
There is no other way to put it: this article is an example of a dysfunctional and moralised discourse about threat frames in public policy. It's high time for us to move towards an evidence-based approach towards geopolitical risk management. A short🧵/1 carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/…
Efforts by politicians to 'persuade through fear appeals' are criticised. Drawing on McCarthy ('Red Scare') and George W. Bush ('Global War on Terror') the costs of 'instrumentalizing threats' are highlighted. The article then pivots to the case of China, but fails to convince /2
While I appreciate that the author is most likely motivated by a desire to advance constructive 🇨🇳 engagement, I find it irritating that the overall argument is littered with logical fallacies. While they could be unintentional, they weaken the persuasiveness of the article /3
"Hexenjagd auf Akademiker"? Bei solcher Rhetorik werde ich hellhörig. Sowohl der Diskurs zu 🇷🇺 als auch 🇨🇳 gilt als stark polarisiert. Ich habe mir also mal das Gespräch zwischen Mangott und Lottaz angehört. Ein🧵basierend auf Lakoffs Theorie zu framing /1
Die Sprachforschung kann uns dabei helfen, die Rhetorik im Gespräch einzuordnen: Metaphern prägen laut George Lakoff unsere jeweilige Weltsicht. Bei Konservativen gelte beispielsweise das 'strict father' frame, bei Progressiven hingegen das frame des 'nurturant parent' /2
In der Außenpolitik können die beiden Metaphern allerdings auch kombiniert werden. Eine pro 🇺🇦 Position kann das 'strict father' frame (Putin als Aggressor) mit 'nurturant parent' frame (Ukraines Souveränität muss gewahrt werden) verbinden. Wie machen das Mangott und Lottaz? /3
Are you a 🕊️ dove or 🦅 hawk on dealing with the Chinese Communist Party? The polarisation between engagement / peaceful co-existence vs. containment / confrontation dominates western 🇨🇳 debates. But can we reframe the metaphors for a smarter middle ground? A short 🧵/1
In my book 'Germany and China' I have argued that a middle ground between competing policy images exists, understood as a 'mixture of empirical information and emotive appeals' (Pal, 2014). This middle ground is marginalised as both camps use frames which seem non-compatible /2
First example: When 🕊️ doves push dialogue and cooperation with 🇨🇳 on climate change, 🦅 hawks scoff: Aren't they trapped by the CCP's restricted, politically managed communication channels, risking cooptation? How could we reframe this for more critical China engagement? /3
Wadephuls Mantra einer “Außenpolitik aus einem Guss” soll harmonisch, einheitlich oder nahtlos wirken, als wäre diese Politik in einem einzigen, ununterbrochenen Prozess entstanden. Tatsächlich ist die 🇩🇪 Außenpolitik durch Zielkonflikte gekennzeichnet /1 spiegel.de/politik/deutsc…
Dieser Slogan erinnert mich an meine Arbeit in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit (EZ). Das BMZ sprach in den Nullerjahren auch immer von “EZ aus einem Guss”. Dem Entwicklungsministerium war vor 20 Jahren bereits die politische Steuerung der Vorfeld-Organisation GTZ entglitten /2
Wenn ich heute “Außenpolitik aus einem Guss” höre zeigt mir das, dass sich strukturell nichts verbessert hat. Das BMZ hätte längst in das AA integriert werden müssen. Geschehen ist nichts. Und jetzt kaschiert das AA den Bedeutungsverlust ggü. dem Kanzleramt mit solchen Slogans /3
Martin Schulz, Vorsitzender der Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, lobte 2021 in einem Brief die Kommunistische Partei Chinas. Lob bekam die Partei dafür, mit angeblich 'konventionellen Mitteln' Covid-19 'weitestgehend wirksam' eingedämmt zu haben. Ein kurzer🧵/1 bild.de/politik/inland…
Die Vertuschung der ersten Fälle in Wuhan, Zwangsinternierungen von Erkrankten während der strikten Null-Covid-Strategie, die Verhinderung einer unabhängigen Untersuchung des Covid-19-Ausbruchs: für den FES-Vorsitzenden anscheinend keine Rede wert /2 bbc.co.uk/news/world-asi…
Was erklärt den Fehltritt von #Schulz? Sein Brief lässt sich mit der Forschung von Robert Jervis erklären. Jervis erklärt, wie kognitive Verzerrungen und psychologische Mechanismen die Wahrnehmung von Entscheidungsträgern in der internationalen Politik beeinflussen können /3
Spannender Artikel von @DietmarPichler1 zur #Propaganda der KP Chinas, mit meinen Einschätzungen 👇
Pichler: Ohne Namen zu nennen: wie schätzen Sie die Positionen der Sinologen und anderer China Experten ein, auch wenn es um China und den russischen Angriffskrieg geht? /1 🇨🇳🇷🇺
Fulda: Während viele Sinologen sich in ihrer Forschung auf kulturelle oder historische Themen konzentrieren, gibt es einige wenige China-Experten, die sich publizistisch oder in Standpunkten auch zur Rolle Chinas in der Geopolitik äussern. /2
Dabei sind mir in letzter Zeit einige Redefiguren aufgefallen, die ich für problematisch halte. Die Kommunistische Partei Chinas wird von ihnen als strategisch wichtiger Gesprächspartner aufgewertet... /3