Tuesday, November 15, 2022

Petr Bystron, November 10, 2022, Germany and China

German Bundestag, Plenarprotokoll 60/66, p. 7578.

Right honorable Herr President. Dear colleagues.

The CDU/CSU has now suddenly discovered the term “sovereignty” and feels that the German sovereignty is threatened by China. Quite honestly, I ask myself: What is the cause of that? We in Germany for 50 years have the best of relations with China. It was German Foreign Minister Walter Scheel who was the first to travel to China, a year before Kissinger, and took up diplomatic relations with China. We have profited from that. Nothing of that has changed other than that the U.S.A. now has chosen China for its enemy. And now here you are in the wake of the Americans and want to build up China as a threat.     

Herr Wadephul, you have even interjected: Hamburg, critical infrastructure! How laughable is this argument! Here, China wants to purchase not even 25 percent of one terminal – not of a harbor but of one terminal – and you puff that up into a threat to the sovereignty of Germany! COSCO has participations in ten such harbors in Europe: 100 percent in Greece, in the Netherlands, in Belgium, in Spain over 51 percent. Is the sovereignty of these countries in any way threatened? Of course not! That is complete nonsense, what you have told here!

            Andreas Beck (AfD): Keiner klatscht!

We are an export nation. We produce goods which we export to all the world. And we need goods which we must import. China is our largest trade partner; you know that exactly as well as do we.  

Our German firms besides do the same: Hapag-Lloyd has ten participations in harbors in the entire world, Fraport in ten airports in the entire world; in an airport in Shanghai even with 50 percent. We need the trade, we need the exchange of goods, and that which we claim for ourselves in foreign countries we must also make possible for our partners here in Germany.

Besides, it is your colleagues in the CDU and the CSU who rejoice over China’s investments in Germany. It is, for one, Hendrik Wüst, CDU Minister-president in Nordrhein-Westphalen, who praises the cooperation in the area of the Silk Road. Your CSU colleague has certainly praised the KUKA investments. And if you look at the results: KUKA last year celebrated the second-best year in its history. That is the result of good cooperation between China and Germany.  

            Gyde Jensen (FDP): Yes, that makes Xi Jinping happy!

Let us remain at Duisburg. The railroad terminal there, a junction of the Silk Road, is highly praised. In that regard, there is great competition. The Chinese are investing 100 billion dollars in the Silk Road infrastructure. The Poles say: We would gladly have this junction in Poland. – In Germany, of course, the railway infrastructure is already so decayed that no secure transport is possible. That, dear Herr Wadephul, is the fault of your CDU colleagues, your transportation ministers from Wissmann to Andi Scheuer of the CSU.

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): There is still lacking “16 years”.

The best example is the Transrapid, a German leading technology which we wanted to construct here in Germany. Your colleague Wissmann and the Bavarian Minister-president

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): Now we are even in the ‘90s!

 2008 that was, since you have buried it. Instead, the technology was sold to China. The Transrapid now runs in Shanghai, and the successor to this train, built by the Chinese, runs at 620 kilometers per hour.  

            Jens Spahn (CDU/CSU): What has that to do with strategic sovereignty?

All of us here could thus go from Munich to Berlin in an hour and we need not bother with the continual delays of the Deutschen Bahn or the Berlin-Brandenburg disaster airport.

Dear colleagues, the Chinese are not the greatest threat for Germany, the greatest threat for Germany is you, the politicians, who in the last years have driven this country into the wall.

Thank you.

 

[trans: tem]