In China, says Rudolf Scharping, you can forget everything except your cell phone.

“The Chinese” reads the menu in the restaurant with his smartphone, orders the food and pays for it.

Scharping should know, because the former SPD chairman and his party's candidate for chancellor - he won 36.4 percent in the 1994 federal election, a figure that Olaf Scholz can only dream of - has been in business with China for fifteen years.

This means that with his company RSBK (Rudolf Scharping Strategieberatung Kommunikation) he mainly advises German companies that want to invest in the Middle Kingdom.

The small company is based on the top floor of a medium-sized high-rise building on Hamburger Allee.

As he puts it, he ended up in Frankfurt “for a known reason”.

He means the now divorced marriage to Kristina Countess Pilati.

His consulting company also wants to inform the specialist public about China.

Scharping warns against judging the huge empire with its 1.4 billion people and its system, which oscillates between communism, capitalism and Confucianism, by European standards.

He sums up the comparison between the German and Chinese economies: “We are good, but too slow.” Topics at the conferences organized by the RSBK include German-Chinese relations in the times of Corona and rail transport between Europe and China.

The guests and speakers usually include politicians.

Scharping says there are definitely friends in politics;

he mentions the names of Rainer Brüderle, Kurt Beck and Edgar Meister, among others.

No life without work

The former “troika” of the Social Democrats has long been obsolete.

He meets Gerhard Schröder occasionally when the opportunity arises.

He no longer wants to see Oskar Lafontaine because he "has so shamefully turned his back on the SPD".

Political action, says the former Prime Minister of Rhineland-Palatinate (1991 to 1994), SPD Federal Chairman (1993 to 1995) and Defense Minister (1998 to 2002), he does not lack at all.

When asked if he could imagine life without work, he says: “No, why?” According to his own estimates, he has stayed in China for five to six years in the past fifteen years.

During the pandemic, it has become significantly less because he doesn't find quarantine funny.

Looking back without anger

Rudolf Scharping, who has remained slim, is still the president of the Federation of German Cyclists on the Otto-Fleck-Schneise with 2,400 clubs and 143,000 members. He has been re-elected repeatedly since 2005, praises the teamwork and is proud that the association has overcome two crises. Despite doping and Corona, the number of members could even be increased.

Between Koblenz and California, Scharping has three daughters and six grandchildren.

He invites her, his ex-wife from his first marriage and other relatives to a different European country once a year.

After Spain, Portugal, Poland and the Netherlands, it is Denmark's turn this time.

The grandchildren should learn something about Europe.

Scharping, who was born on December 2, 1947 in Niederelbert in the Westerwald, looks back on his 35 full-time years in politics without anger: "Not every hour was great, but overall these years were a great time."

When his party made him an honorary member of Rhineland-Palatinate, in his speech he compared his father's life with his own.

The father was born in World War I and was a soldier from 1939 to 1945.

The great good of a safe and free Europe is a reason for every citizen to take responsibility.