Hong Kong's shadow hangs over Angela Merkel's visit to Beijing

She is the first leader of a Western power to visit China since the beginning of the protest movement in Hong Kong. German Chancellor Angela Merkel begins Thursday (September 5th) with a two-day visit to meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and representatives of business circles. A stay that Berlin hopes will be fruitful commercially.

But the context has caught up with the German leader, who is pressed on all sides to address with the Chinese authorities the Hong Kong issue and to champion the European interests, threatened by the hardening of the Sino-US trade war.

"You grew up in the GDR"

On Wednesday, September 4, the famous Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong sent an open letter to Angela Merkel. "Chancellor, you grew up in the GDR [former East Germany, Ed.] You have known life under the yoke of an authoritarian regime," writes the 22-year-old from Hong Kong, urging the head of the government German to tap into his personal experience to understand the claims of the protesters and put pressure on the Beijing regime. And to call the Chancellor to meet representatives of the protesters.

A missive that has received a wide echo across the Rhine. Nils Schmidt, international affairs expert for the SPD (social-democrats, center-left), has called on Angela Merkel (CDU, center-right) to warn the Chinese leader that a crackdown on demonstrations in Hong Kong would not be "acceptable "for Germany. The German Greens even asked Berlin to threaten Beijing with trade sanctions. For the liberal-democrats of the FDP, Berlin did not choose the best time to win contracts in China while Beijing "continues to encroach on the fundamental freedoms of individuals."

The pressure is all the greater on Angela Merkel as Germany was the first country in the world to grant political asylum to two Hong Kong activists in 2018. To mention the crisis that shakes the former British colony would be, as such , a question of political coherence.

More broadly, "Paris and Brussels will closely monitor this move to see if Berlin will champion the new European line against China rather than favor only the German interests," notes in a blog post Mikko Huotari, Deputy Director of the Mercator Institute for China Studies (Merics), one of the leading German research institutes on China.

Last March, the European Union tightened its tone, calling Beijing Europe's "systemic rival" on the economic front. If the other members of the EU are waiting for the German Chancellor to preach the good word of Europe to Beijing - asking in particular for a greater openness of the country to European companies - it is because Germany will take the rotating presidency of Council the EU from mid-2020.

Hope vs economic reality

The German Chancellery has been very reluctant to meet these expectations. Pressed by the press, Steffen Seibert, the spokesman of the government, did not want to add anything beyond what was registered in the official program of Angela Merkel. A document that, apart from a meeting with students in the city of Wuhan (halfway between Beijing and Hong Kong), remains very discreet on the possible exchanges with the local civil society. A meeting with protesters Hong Kong seems, in any case, excluded.

Germany has, however, been more entrepreneurial in the past on the human rights front. During her last trip to Beijing in May 2018, Angela Merkel had obtained that Beijing let the widow of dissident Liu Xiaobo leave the country, said Deutsche Welle.

But hopes placed in Angela Merkel may run up against economic reality. At the head of a delegation of 25 major bosses, the Chancellor wants above all to play the role of VRP of his country. The importance of the Chinese market for an economy as export-oriented as Germany has been known for years. Trade between the two countries reached $ 199 billion in 2018, and China has been the main market for cars, machine tools and other industrial products in Germany for three years.

Complicated Sino-German relationship

For a year now, the economic and political situation has been pushing Angela Merkel to show her paw even whiter than usual in her relations with Beijing. Germany is, in fact, the main European victim of the trade conflict between Washington and Beijing, which has had a negative effect on world trade. So much so that the big European exporting power should not escape a recession this year.

To win some lucrative contracts will put balm in the heart of German economic circles. Their hopes are reinforced by the fact that there are "signs of greater openness to foreign investors in sectors such as finance and the automobile," says Mikko Huotari. Activities in which Germany is traditionally very strong with champions like Volkswagen or Deutsche Bank.

But if the Sino-German relationship has long been good, "it has become much more complicated lately," notes the specialist Merics. Beijing badly digested a debate in the German parliament in November 2018 on the situation in Xinjiang province where China is accused of having established a police state to control the Muslim minority of Uyghurs. German reluctance to let Chinese equipment manufacturer Huawei participate in the roll-out of 5G mobile Internet networks for national security reasons has also hurt the Asian superpower.

In the eyes of Beijing, Germany has things to be forgiven if she wants to sign new trade agreements. Not sure that the Hong Kong protesters are very heavy on the trade balance. Above all, as the German financial daily Handelsblatt points out, no other Western country has taken a firm stand to condemn the police violence in Hong Kong. In short: Germany, increasingly aware of its economic fragility, does not seem inclined to play the role of European diplomatic engine to pressure Beijing.