Global Importance
December 22, 2007
German aid to China, which totaled 67.5 million euros ($97 million) in 2007, has come under attack in Germany, on the grounds that the Chinese economy is booming and that China is itself an aid donor, particularly to Africa.
In particular, German aid was aimed at improving the efficiency of electricity generation, the minister -- who is a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) -- said, pointing out that the recent UN energy summit in Bali made it "absolutely clear" for everybody how important it is to cooperate with China on energy issues.
The recent UN Climate Change Conference ended with an agreement on a roadmap for a two-year process of negotiations designed to set new targets for greenhouse gas emissions to replace those in the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.
Before nailing down the agreement, developing countries including India and China had expressed concern that they might be forced to accept binding emissions reduction standards. They are not required to accept emission reduction commitments under the Kyoto Protocol, and say that any such commitments would cramp economic growth and curb poverty reduction efforts.
No more junk
As China was opening one coal-fired plant a week, "it is important to us whether it is equipped with the most modern technology or is an old junk heap," she said.
China in any case paid back the loans, Wieczorek-Zeul added.
The German Development Ministry focuses on three areas in providing assistance to other countries: environmental protection and sustainable use of natural resources, sustainable economic development and transport, including modernizing the rail network.
The Justice Ministry maintains a dialogue on human rights and the rule of law, although the Chinese halted discussions on this front following a private meeting between the Dalai Lama and Chancellor Angela Merkel in September.
The right balance
Relations with China have been causing tensions in the ruling German coalition over what should be the driving force in Germany's foreign policy -- economics or ethics.
In the latest partisan stab on the grand-coalition front, Social Democratic chief Kurt Beck criticized Angela Merkel's decision to meet the Dalai Lama.
"Anybody who knows anything about China understands that politics over there is done much more through protocol than we're used to," Beck told the Frankfurter Allgemeinen Sonntagszeitung in an interview to be published on Sunday, Dec. 23.
"Those who do politics with China only by means of public warnings will not get far," Beck said, pointing out that China as well as Russia were Germany's "strategic partners."
Business as usual?
Beck's open criticism of his party's coalition partner is likely to complicate what is already a sensitive and seemingly interminable debate on the German political scene.
The premier of the central German state of Hesse and member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Roland Koch, last month openly criticized German Foreign Minister and SPD member Frank-Walter Steinmeier for "creating the impression in Russia and China that we Germans are ready to do any kind of business, even when human rights are being trampled on."
"In doing so, the foreign minister is harming our country," Koch said.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, however, in a speech to the German parliament last month, defended her country's foreign policy as one that was based both on ethics and economic interests.
"Human rights policy and representation of economic interests are two sides of the same coin," Merkel said. "They should never be opposed to each another."