Von der Leyen has delivered the speech on China that Europe has been waiting for. It is a clear-eyed, confident vision for the relationship that acknowledges China has changed & that Europe’s response must too, with an economic security strategy at its core. My quick takeaways: 1) Europe remains open to talking with China. VdL calls for a diplomatic “de-risking” ahead of her Beijing trip with Macron
2) No illusions about China’s trajectory. VdL says 🇨🇳 has “turned the page” on reform & opening, is focused on security & control, changing world order

My sense is that Olaf Scholz has done about as well as he could on this visit, given the questionable timing & the messages sent by the Cosco deal and inclusion of a business delegation. It was important that Scholz not shy away from the contentious issues, and he did not ... I find positive that he:
1) secured a message from China that it opposes an escalation in Ukraine and the threat/use of nuclear weapons
2) made clear that Germany opposes a non-peaceful change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait

Some news: Olaf Scholz & Emmanuel Macron are planning separate trips - roughly a week apart - to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping in the weeks before the G20 summit in November. These will be the 1st trips by a German & French leader to China in 3 years (THREAD) Scholz’s predecessor Angela Merkel made her last trip to China in Sep 2019. Macron was last there in Nov 2019. Since then, EU-China ties have deteriorated. The list of contentious issues is long: Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Lithuania, Ukraine, trade & investment barriers

Nothing brand new or unexpected in @SecBlinken's long-awaited China strategy speech but a number of messages that will reassure US allies in Europe and elsewhere. A short thread with some of the key quotes: DECOUPLING: "The US does not want to sever China’s economy from ours or from the global economy, though Beijing, despite its rhetoric, is pursuing asymmetric decoupling, seeking to make China less dependent on the world, and the world more dependent on China"

The war in #Ukraine has triggered an intense debate in #Germany about its dependence on Russian energy, but also its far broader economic ties to #China. Here is a sample of what German political and industry leaders have said about this in the past week alone... "Perhaps the time has come when we should give preference to doing business with those who are not only trading partners but also want to be value partners"
- Finance Minister @c_lindner in @DIEZEIT

A new survey of German businesses in China shows that 71% plan to increase their investments in the country over the next 2 years & 96% have no specific plans to leave within the next year... A little over a third of surveyed firms report being treated unfavourably compared to domestic Chinese firms...

According to this @wiwo article, @OlafScholz asked @eucopresident to pass on a message to Xi Jinping in October, assuring him that there would be no change in Germany's policy towards China once he replaced Merkel 1/4
wiwo.de/politik/auslan… The move reportedly came after a conversation between Scholz and Merkel in which the outgoing chancellor expressed her concerns about a hardening of China policy under the new government 2/4

For over a year, Berlin has been banking on the expectation that China would feel the need to do an investment deal with the EU due to ongoing US pressure & the prospect of a transatlantic front. Two weeks ago those hopes were fading 1/8 But China has now made a series of last minute concessions to get a deal done. The view in Berlin & Brussels is that no better deal will ever be on the table. So there is a temptation to grab this even though Beijing has not moved on every EU demand - notably labour rights 2/8

The CDU leadership in parliament adopted this paper on #5G yesterday evening. It is softer in key areas, paving the way (by my reading) for a #Huawei role in the German network. This is significant! Key elements: - The core network will have “the highest” security. But for the periphery (“Zugangsnetz”) it states that security standards “should not endanger an immediate shift to 5G” (ie no rip and replace) /1