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]
