German Chancellor calls for fair competition in trade with China

Beijing. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Monday called for fair competition in trade relations with China and defended his arguments in favor of open and fair markets, warning his hosts against dumping and overproduction.

“At some point there will also be Chinese cars in Germany and Europe. The only thing that must always be clear is that the competition must be fair,” Scholz told the students at Tongji University in Shanghai.

“In other words, no dumping, no overproduction, no copyright violations,” he said, adding that it is important to allow companies to set up production facilities locally without bureaucratic obstacles.

Some of the nearly five thousand German companies operating in China complain of disadvantages compared to their local competitors and of having more difficult access to the market amid legal uncertainties.

“Of course we would like our companies to have no restrictions, but on the contrary we behave exactly as we demand here,” he said. Thus, he made comparisons with the reservations of years ago, when Japanese and Korean car manufacturers entered the German market.

The European Union is considering tariffs to protect its producers against imports of cheaper electric vehicles from China, which some fear will flood the European market. However, the Asian giant is expected to pressure Germany not to support the measures threatened by the European bloc against cars and equipment for solar and wind farms.

Scholz began his three-day trip to China last Sunday in the industrial hub of Chongqing, where he and his delegation of ministers and business executives visited a company partially financed by Germany and other sites in the large city, which is a base of production for Chinese automobile and other industries.

He is scheduled to meet President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in the capital on Tuesday before returning to Berlin later that day. During the meeting he is expected to address the Asian leader about his alleged support for the Russian economy two years after the invasion of Ukraine.