Probably the single biggest geopolitical issue for the EU right now, and especially for Germany, is future relations with China. Last week, a German business magazine reported that a senior official of Angela Merkel’s chancellery had visited China to explore an anti-spying agreement. Such agreements are usually not worth the paper they are written on. The context of this visit was the bid by Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications equipment maker, for the fifth generation mobile licences in Germany (on which a decision is due at some point this month). A no-spying agreement would allow Germany to pretend that China does not constitute a security threat after all.
The economic relationship between the two countries is interesting. Germany is ambivalent about China. It needs Chinese technology, such as Huawei’s. German mobile phone operators are particularly keen on Huawei’s 5G bid because they already use the Chinese company’s hardware in their networks.
But Germany also worries about Chinese companies acquiring its technology. Last December, a new law reduced the threshold of equity stakes that automatically trigger a mergers investigation. The new industrial strategy, recently proposed by Peter Altmaier, the economy minister, wants to protect entire sectors from Chinese acquisitions — aircraft, finance, telecommunication, trains, energy and robotics.