‘I only say China, China, China’, the German Chancellor warned, and everybody knew what that meant. Soon the Chinese would come to shift the balance of power and dominate the world. The audience didn’t need to strain their imagination to figure out where this would leave Europe, let alone Germany.

It was not Chancellor Angela Merkel, though, who had said these words but one of her predecessors, the now largely forgotten Kurt-Georg Kiesinger more than four decades ago. Europe’s fear of China, however, wasn’t even news then. ‘Let China sleep, for when she awakes, she will shake the world’, French emperor Napoléon Bonaparte once famously warned.

Unfortunately for Europeans, it is not China that is sleeping now but Europe.

While China transformed itself from the shambles of Mao’s Great Leap Forward into a global superpower, Europe stubbornly refuses to acknowledge the new geopolitical realities. In the minds of European politicians, business leaders and diplomats, Europe remains the hub of the world and China an immature newcomer on the global stage. And this is how Europeans have been treating China for decades.

Hier weiterlesen.

(Dr. Oliver Marc Hartwich)