German Port Dumps China's Belt And Road Pipe Dream

Less than eight years after Duisburg, a port city at Germany's industrial heartland at the junction of the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, embraced China due to the battering of the country's steel and coal industries in the 1990s and early 2000s, the Germans now want nothing of Xi Jinping, Jens Kastner reported for Nikkei Asia.

Photo Insert: Duisburg port

Chancellor Olaf Scholz was the first European leader to visit Beijing since Xi secured a third term as party leader at the Communist Party Congress in October.

But German attitudes have soured recently over China's cozy relationship with Russia, Taiwan, and human rights, as well as its growing trade deficit with the world's second-biggest economy.

Germany is currently reviewing its relationship with Beijing, with the unveiling of Berlin's new basic guidelines for its China policy expected in the next few weeks. Draft excerpts show lawmakers urging a significantly toughened stance and a reduction of economic reliance on China.

The more drastic prescriptions include limiting investment in China and stricter monitoring of companies overdependent on China for business.

Plans were buried in 2021 for a sprawling China business center on the banks of the Rhine, from where hundreds of Chinese companies were meant to grow their European distribution networks.

In November, Duisburg cited China's ties with Russia as a reason for letting expire a memorandum of understanding for a sweeping "smart city" project with Chinese tech giant Huawei.

Russia's sudden reduction of natural gas exports to Germany fueled a notion among German policymakers that it was not a good idea to let critical infrastructure fall into the wrong hands.

Around the same time, it became known that Chinese state-owned Cosco Shipping Holdings had in June quietly returned a 30% stake in a 100 million euro ($108 million) Duisburg port terminal project.

In late 2022, a port spokesman told Nikkei Asia that although momentum has since improved, figures remain below pre-pandemic days -- the share of the China-Europe freight rail business in the port's overall turnover is now only a puny 3% or 4%.

One complaint among opposition Duisburg council members is that Chinese companies are not contributing to the local economy.

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