To view, develop China-Germany bilateral relations from long-term, strategic perspective

On the morning of April 16, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Beijing. This is Scholz's second visit to China since he took office, and Scholz is the first leader of a major Western country to visit China this year. The two leaders exchanged views on bilateral relations and international and regional issues of mutual interest.

Xi called on the two countries need to view and develop bilateral relations from a long-term and strategic perspective, and work together to inject greater stability and certainty into the world. His remarks have charted the course for the two countries to further advance bilateral relations and to jointly contribute more to world peace and prosperity under new circumstances.

Photo shows an office of a German company in Taicang Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone, east China's Jiangsu province. (Photo courtesy of Taicang Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone)

Over the past 50-plus years since the establishment of diplomatic ties, China and Germany have enjoyed robust bilateral relations. The two countries have had close exchanges at all levels and in all fields.

China's policy toward Germany is highly stable and consistent. China always views Germany as its important partner of mutually beneficial cooperation and supports Germany in playing a more important role in Europe and the wider world.

The two sides successfully held the intergovernmental consultation and high-level dialogues on strategic and financial issues, and will hold a dialogue on climate change and green transition. As long as the two sides uphold mutual respect, seek common ground while reserving differences, enhance exchanges and mutual learning, and pursue win-win cooperation, China-Germany relations will continue to enjoy solid and sustained progress.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the all-round strategic partnership between China and Germany. Over the past 10 years, despite tremendous changes in the international landscape, China-Germany relations have maintained steady growth, and bilateral cooperation has strengthened and deepened across the board, providing impetus for the development of both countries.

Both history and reality have proved that the all-round strategic partnership is an inevitable choice and the optimal solution for China-Germany relations.

The more instability in the world, the greater the need for the two sides to strengthen the resilience and vitality of their relations, Xi said, calling for joint efforts to keep to the overall direction of cooperation and development in growing bilateral ties, and stick to the characterization of all-round strategic partnership.

Scholz said that going forward, the German side will work with the Chinese side to strengthen bilateral ties, deepen dialogue and cooperation in all fields, and promote people-to-people exchanges in such areas as education and culture.

Enhancing mutual understanding and trust, and strengthening dialogue and communication will contribute to the healthy and stable development of the all-round strategic partnership between the two countries.

Both China and Germany have deeply engaged in and benefited from each other's development, with pragmatic cooperation always being the defining feature of China-Germany relations.

China and Germany are important trading partners for each other. Germany has been China's largest trading partner in Europe for 49 consecutive years, while China has been Germany's largest trading partner for eight consecutive years.

According to a report by German Economic Institute (IW), in 2023, German direct investment in China increased by 4.3 percent year on year to a record high of 11.9 billion euros ($12.7 billion).

Young Germans experience paper knife cutting, an item of China's intangible cultural heritage, at Changzhou Library, east China's Jiangsu province. (People's Daily Online/Hu Ping)

In the face of weak global economic recovery and rising protectionism, German investment in China has remained strong. Thousands of German companies and institutions are actively engaged in the Chinese market, which once again demonstrates that mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Germany is not a "risk," but the guarantee for a stable bilateral relationship and an opportunity for the future.

There is huge potential to be tapped for pursuing win-win cooperation in both traditional sectors such as machinery and automobile, and new areas such as green transition, digitization and artificial intelligence.

This time, Scholz visited Chongqing and Shanghai together with representatives of the German business community, and witnessed the great economic progress China made over recent years. He said that Germany opposes protectionism and supports free trade.

It is important for the two countries to adopt an objective and dialectical view on the issue of production capacity through a market and global perspective and based on the laws of economics, and devote more efforts to the discussion on cooperation, which will bring bilateral economic and trade cooperation to a new level and inject continuous impetus into global economic recovery.

As China and Germany are respectively the second and third largest economies in the world, the consolidation and development of their relations carries significance that goes beyond the bilateral scope, and has a major impact on the Eurasian continent and the entire world.

China and Germany share a lot in common on the issue of world multipolarity. Both of them support globalization and international cooperation.

Xi pointed out that a multipolar world is, in essence, one where countries with different civilizations, systems and paths respect each other and coexist in peace. China and Germany need to independently carry out collaboration on multilateral fronts, push the international community to take real actions to better address global challenges such as climate change, unbalanced development and regional conflicts, and make greater contribution to the balance and stability of the world.

Xi and Scholz reached a consensus on the Ukraine crisis, Palestinian-Israeli conflict and other issues, which will inject greater stability and certainty into a turbulent and intertwined world.

China and Germany do not have clashing fundamental interests between them and pose no security threat to each other. Cooperation between the two countries benefits not just the two sides but also the world at large.

Both sides should cherish and inherit the valuable experience of the development of bilateral relations, constantly enhance mutual understanding and trust, and deepen practical cooperation, so as to inject new impetus into the all-round strategic partnership between China and Germany, and make greater contributions to world peace, stability, and growth.