It will take “decades” for Germany’s manufacturers to reduce their dependence on China, according to the chief financial officer of software technology group Siemens, highlighting the quandary facing western companies and their reliance on the country as a market as well as a supplier.
“Global value chains have been building up over the last 50 years. How naive do you need to be to believe that this can be changed within six or 12 months?” said Ralf Thomas. “This is about decades.”
His comments follow a report from the German Economic Institute that found that the country’s corporations had made little progress in “de-risking” their China exposure and reducing their critical import dependencies since 2022.