Is Germany afraid of China?

The German air force has taken off for its first deployment in the Indo-Pacific region. It will take part in Australia’s biennial warfare exercise Pitch Black from Friday, side by side with other western nations as well as regional partners such as Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Berlin’s show of solidarity will be welcomed by Nato allies, but it will also draw pushback from China. It’s an opportunity for Germany to show that it can make a meaningful contribution to the deterrence of Chinese aggression in the Pacific. But in order to do so convincingly it will have to resist pressure from Beijing with more confidence than it has in the past.

Germany’s commitment looks promising. It is sending six Eurofighter Typhoons, four A400M transport aircraft, three A330 multirole tanker transport aircraft and around 250 personnel to Australia. That’s the Luftwaffe’s biggest deployment since the second world war. Germany is also keen to impress with speed and readiness. Dubbed ‘Rapid Pacific’, the deployment involves getting the fighter jets from Neuburg Air Base in Bavaria to Singapore within 24 hours before flying on to Darwin, Australia. This will involve around 200 mid-air refuelling manoeuvres. ‘We are sending a clear signal,’ says German air force chief Ingo Gerhartz, ‘the Luftwaffe can be deployed fast and worldwide.’

The nature of the deployment itself is designed to reassure Nato partners that Germany stands by them and is not afraid of China. Gerhartz himself will be flying one of the Eurofighters as they visit Japan – a route that takes them past Taiwan and the South China Sea, if not directly through the Taiwan Strait. Gerhartz told the German paper Bild that ‘our deployment is not a signal against anyone.’ Instead, he said it was intended as a signal ‘for our like-minded partners in the region. For democracies.’

With tensions growing between China and Taiwan, such signals will be heard loud and clear in Beijing regardless of how they are dressed up. Nato recently decided to label China a ‘systemic challenge’. Germany is expected to play its part as one of the economic heavyweights of the alliance. But so far Germany has shown little real commitment to containing and deterring Beijing. 

Last year, in an effort to reassure its allies, Berlin sent the frigate Bayern into the South China Sea – the German navy’s first deployment there in nearly two decades. But what could have been a gesture of solidary with European allies, who were running similar ‘presence operations’, ended up being a show of German insecurity. Following threats from China, the route of the Bayern was changed, avoiding any chance for German, British, French and Dutch ships to link up.

In the build-up to that deployment, Germany had been visibly nervous about sending even a single frigate into the South China Sea, which significantly detracted from any deterrence value the operation may have had. The Bayern was scheduled to visit Shanghai before entering contested waters, a move that could easily have been interpreted as requesting permission, thereby tacitly accepting Chinese territorial claims. As it was, Beijing denied the frigate entry and reminded Berlin of the ‘all-round strategic partnership between China and Germany, including cooperation between the two militaries’.

The political division in Berlin over the matter was painfully obvious to Beijing. In 2019, Rolf Mützenich, head of the parliamentary faction of the Social Democratic party, said that German engagement in the Indo-Pacific reminded him of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s demands for ‘a place in the sun’ for his country. ‘It goes against the security-political ideas of the SPD,’ he added. That same SPD with the same parliamentary leader is now in government under Chancellor Olaf Scholz. It will have to work hard to convince Beijing that it has changed its ways and means business this time.

But the chance to change strategy is certainly there. Despite the continuities in personnel – Scholz was vice chancellor under the previous chancellor Angela Merkel – Germany’s new government has vowed to be tougher on China, particularly on its human rights abuses. Berlin is currently working on a new China strategy which will drive a ‘tougher’ course toward the authoritarian regime. It has recently scrapped investment guarantees for companies like VW that might wish to further invest in the Xinjiang region due to damning reports of Uyghur detention camps there.

However, currently it is not entirely clear how Germany will manage to be tough on China while it is so economically dependent on the country. The People’s Republic has been Germany’s biggest trading partner for years. Last year alone €245 billion worth of imports and exports changed hands between the two countries. New Audi’s contain 149 parts directly from China and many more that contain sub-components from there. Germany is dependent on China even for the metals it needs to build the solar panels, electric cars and wind turbines that are meant to make it less dependent on imported energy.

Tearing itself loose from Chinese dependence will not be easy. When Beijing turns its economic thumb screws, Germany’s pacifists, industrialists and lobbyists will turn theirs too. Germany can and should be central to Nato’s China approach but before it can convince China and its allies that it is not afraid of Beijing, it needs to convince itself.