Before it made its big appearance, it had to undergo repairs and a rivet needed replacement. The saddler then rubbed the leather with a cream, and the scuffs and stains disappeared. Olaf Scholz's 40-year-old briefcase looked like new again. The repairs had been ordered for the German chancellor's first video on the TikTok platform, with the briefcase as its focus.

Scholz wants to engage more young people through the video portal of the Chinese company Bytedance and not leave the field to Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which has shown itself as particularly adept at exploiting the social network. Concerns about the protection of Chinese access to data had suddenly become a secondary priority. The fact that the TikTok premiere took place shortly before the chancellor's second trip to China is pure coincidence, his spokesperson assures. But it fits in with the message of this visit: We come to the table as good partners – and hardly as rivals.

China As a "Systemic Rival"

Things had once been conceived differently. Using China as an example, Germany's federal government coalition wanted to show that it had learned the right lessons from Russia's invasion of Ukraine. That Germany would not once again recklessly place itself at the mercy of an autocracy.

"De-risking" was the new line, less risk through reduced economic dependence on a single country and increased cooperation with other nations – in the Global South, for example. That was set out in a new China strategy, which was adopted last July following tough political wrangling. The prospect of profits alone should no longer guide Germany's China policy; human rights should be given greater weight.

At the time, it was said that China was now also a "systemic rival."

The new China strategy still applies today, at least in theory. But the reality has turned out differently.

Scholz is traveling with a large business delegation to Chongqing, Shanghai and Beijing, just as Chancellor Angela Merkel used to do, as if everything were as it used to be. A dozen representatives of large companies are on board, as are three members of Scholz's cabinet: Digital Minister Volker Wissing of the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Agriculture Minister Cem Özdemir (both of the Green Party). That's quite a lot of high-level representation for a country that Berlin supposedly wants to keep a greater distance from. The German delegation is likely to be viewed with suspicion in Washington, D.C, and London.

The talks during the trip are expected to focus on issues like trade in swine, agreements on the circular economy, but also on the major economic issues and Ukraine. Scholz, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), is slated to travel to China for three days, and President Xi Jinping has scheduled several hours for a meeting with him on Tuesday. The whole thing sounds a bit more like rapprochement than any kind of stepping back. "It's re-risking rather than de-risking," scoff activists at the China-critical organization Tibet Initiative Germany.

In fact, there is not much evidence of any reduction of the risks. China has been Germany's largest trading partner for years now. German businesses invested 11.9 billion euros in China last year, more than ever before. The multinational German chemical company BASF, for example, is building a huge new plant in southern China for a price of up to 10 billion euros. At the same time, the value of all imports from China exceeded German exports by 59 billion euros in 2023.

A Question of Years, not Months

The German Economic Institute (IW) counts around 200 product groups of which Germany imported at least 50 percent from China last year. These include chemicals, solar cells and batteries, laptops and magnets, as well as raw materials such as rare earths. "China is flooding the European market with renewable energies, in particular," says IW economist Jürgen Matthes. As the economy is weakening at home, China has considerable overcapacity – and it is seeking to unload its electric cars, batteries and solar modules on the global market in a big way. Many factories in China are heavily subsidized by Beijing.

Other countries have reacted to the dumping strategy. In the United States, President Joe Biden is considering punitive tariffs on electric cars and export restrictions for semiconductors. The European Commission is also considering punitive tariffs. But German Chancellor Scholz is opposed to such measures. He fears a trade war and believes that companies should do more to handle the challenge themselves. Sources close to Scholz say he believes "de-risking" is a matter of years, not months.

Critical infrastructure is now quickly protected and freed from dependencies, and there are strict regulations on compliance with human rights, such as the Supply Chain Act, which can force a German company to leave a country if inhumane working conditions are prevalent there. But sources note that one shouldn't forget that, in contrast to France and the U.S., Germany is an export nation that sells masses of cars to China.

"We have found that the China strategy has not yet resulted in anything concrete," says Nadine Godehardt, an Asia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). "In any case, we don't see any major structural changes. No China commissioner, no expert commission, no new institution." And what "de-risking" means in concrete terms is largely defined by the individual German government ministries.

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that "mutual economic dependencies are no longer a guarantee for peace," says economist Matthes. "On the contrary, they can even be harmful because they make you vulnerable to blackmail and restrict your own room for maneuver."

Countering the Trend Toward Protectionism

At a meeting of EU economics ministers near Paris at the beginning of April, German Economy Minister Robert Habeck of the Green Party attended, as did his counterparts from France and Italy. Europe is receiving "huge quantities of cheap Chinese products," French Minister Bruno Le Maire lamented at the time. He noted that the trade deficit between Europe and China has tripled in the past 10 years. Le Maire is pushing for stricter regulation – he wants tougher policies.

Habeck, on the other hand, is warning against chasing the international trend towards more protectionism and higher tariffs. On this front, his language largely echoes that of the German chancellor.

If Habeck's fellow Green Party member Annalena Baerbock had her way, Germany would present itself differently in Beijing. The German foreign minister has already called the Chinese president a "dictator."

The Chancellery and the Foreign Ministry hold different views on China. Scholz has his eye on the country as an indispensable supplier of raw materials and also as a market for selling German-made goods. But Baerbock's diplomats are alarmed by China's aggressive stance towards its Uyghur minority, Taiwan and Hong Kong. She warns that the superpower is buying ever greater influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America with infrastructure projects, while it is at the same time spying on the West.

Scholz is pushing for cooperation, Baerbock for confrontation. An initial version of the China strategy was written in the resolute tone of the foreign minister. But the Chancellery pushed for more flexible wording. After all, they didn't want to present an "anti-China strategy," officials in the Chancellery said. It is clear in the more moderate version now in force, that Scholz's Chancellery prevailed in toning down the language. But now, nine months after it was initially drafted, even the more moderate sentences seem harsh in comparison to reality.

Unsolicited Tips from the Foreign Minister

Within the SPD party, they have not forgotten how Baerbock gave the Chancellor unsolicited advice before his first trip to China in the fall of 2022. She called on Scholz to demand human rights, fair competitive conditions and respect for international law for Beijing. It was both a reminder to her boss – and an affront.

A year ago, Baerbock traveled to China herself. During the joint press conference in Beijing, the foreign minister and her then counterpart had a long argument about whether human rights apply universally.

It is hard to imagine Scholz engaging in verbal battles like that. He also likely won't even have the opportunity to do so. As with his last visit to China's president, no questions from journalists are planned this time either. That is the protocol requested by China, and the Germans plan to comply.

In a conference room in Berlin last Wednesday, representatives of Hong Kong activists, Tibetans, Uyghurs and the Society for Threatened Peoples sat at a long table, along with an economics expert from the Technical University of Dresden. They came with an urgent request for the chancellor: That he had to speak frankly in Beijing.

The activists expressed their concern in a letter to Chancellor Scholz that "the nature of the Chinese Communist Party's rule is being misjudged or even ignored, as in the case of Russia." They also enclosed with it information about the fates of detainees and persecuted persons.

"Russia Is the Storm, China Is Climate Change"

They wrote that Scholz is taking representatives from companies "that have demonstrably and very likely profited from forced labor," says David Missal from the Tibet Initiative Germany. He argues that the chancellor is opening the door for companies that continue to invest heavily in China instead of diversifying.

It's likely that Scholz will not meet with human rights activists or critical intellectuals in China because this might actually be too dangerous for regime critics.

The fact that China is increasingly moving away from partnership practices can also be felt in Germany. Behind the diplomatic facade, China has long been operating like an adversary. China poses a greater long-term threat to German security and interests than Russia, the heads of the German foreign intelligence service BND and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), which is responsible for counterintelligence, told members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, back in 2022. "Russia is the storm, China is climate change," BfV President Thomas Haldenwang said at the time.

In February, American intelligence agencies reported that Chinese attackers had succeeded in infiltrating critical U.S. infrastructures undetected for years in order to strike at some point. In December, DER SPIEGEL revealed that a Chinese agent of the Ministry of State Security paid a politician from the far-right Belgian party Vlaams Belang to launch inquiries in the Belgian parliament, among other things. In chats, he boasted that he had already achieved the same thing in the German Bundestag – as proof, he sent the Belgian a link to a query submitted to the parliament from the AfD.

The increasing aggressiveness of Chinese spies has also led to a change in views on Chinese technology, such as the telecommunications company Huawei.

The three German phone network operators Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica have chosen the Chinese to build their new 5G mobile networks. Their technology is good, reliable and inexpensive. In 2019, under then President Donald Trump, the U.S. took a tough anti-Huawei stance, warning of the risk of espionage and sabotage – and urging its Western partners to follow suit.

Resistance within the Government

The German government under Chancellor Merkel decided otherwise. Since then, Huawei's share in German networks has even increased. The German capital city, for example, is largely supplied with fast mobile communications through Chinese technology.

Just over a year ago, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser ventured a new approach. She wanted to force network operators to remove particularly critical Chinese components. Resistance to her plan materialized quickly. It came from the Chinese, the affected network operators, but also from a colleague within her cabinet: Digital Minister Volker Wissing of the FDP.

From the point of view of Telekom, Vodafone and Telefónica, the plans would be tantamount to a partial expropriation. Without state compensation, the project would be unreasonable and constitutionally problematic, former German Constitutional Court justice Udo Di Fabio wrote in an expert opinion for the companies. The companies argue that a tough ban on China would mean many billions in additional costs and set back the overdue modernization of the grid by years.

They argue that the quality of their networks could also suffer.

According to DER SPIEGEL's research, all attempts by the parties in the government coalition in Berlin failed to reach an agreement before the China visit. Scholz and Wissing do not want to address the issue on their own initiative. But they will likely have to expect questions.

Whereas Germany has been debating the right measures for years, they have long since been implemented in China. The Communist Party has proclaimed its aim of becoming more technologically independent. The country is investing huge sums to make that happen, particularly in the chip industry.

Huawei, for example, has recovered from the setback caused by the far-reaching U.S. ban, with its net profit rising by 145 percent to 11 billion euros. According to a new directive, only "secure and reliable" chips may be used in government computers and data centers, meaning none from the West.

Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin, has called on the chancellor to "more resolutely" reduce Germany's dependence on China. He warns that the lax approach could allow China to continue its "dangerous military modernization with Western, including German, technology." "Without state intervention, it will hardly be possible to prevent the European wind power industry from being squeezed out in the same way the solar industry was," says Benner, referring to low costs in Chinese production that made it impossible for German companies to compete.

Isolation or Cooperation? It's a never-ending dilemma. Europe has to cooperate with the Chinese on climate change and nature conservation, and they could also play an important role in the war in Ukraine. Ties between Beijing and Moscow are growing ever closer. According to the German analysis, even if Beijing has yet to deliver any pallets of ammunition or artillery to Russia, the many dubious deliveries of technology or industrial accessories just below the threshold of arms aid are essential for the Russian war economy. Possibly even decisive for the war. As such, they represent a threat to the security of Europe and Germany. The accusation that China is also endangering German security through its ties to Russia is something that the chancellor reportedly wants to make clear in Beijing.

Is China enabling the war? Officials at the Chancellery in Berlin are hoping that the Chinese won't like this image. It's likely that Scholz will try to persuade the Chinese president to get more involved in the war as a mediator. The aim would be to convince Xi that China needs to show more presence in the international Ukraine conferences again. And possibly persuade Putin to send a representative to later meetings. A Chinese delegation visited Kyiv at the beginning of March, and a few days ago, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Beijing. This gives the chancellor and his advisors hope that Xi might be prepared to take a diplomatic initiative. So far, however, China has not stood out as an honest broker, and this hope could prove to be illusory.