A few days before the Chancellor's trip to Beijing, nothing else was possible than a rotten compromise on the controversial question of Chinese participation in a terminal in the port of Hamburg.
In principle, free world trade is economically advantageous for everyone involved, and of course there is nothing wrong with free world trade involving foreign participation in domestic companies.
It is easy to enumerate examples of all-round useful investments by German companies abroad and foreign companies at home.
The only problem is that what seems advantageous in principle can be associated with considerable costs in times of growing geopolitical tensions.
In this regard, German politics over the past few decades has seemed downright self-abandoned: Germany has no raw materials strategy, energy security has long been an underestimated issue, and people have had illusions about China.
There is a lot of work to be done to make the country future-proof.