By Judy Dempsey
BERLIN, June 13 – Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany began a three-day visit to China on Friday, ending a period of cool political relations between Berlin and Beijing after Chancellor Angela Merkel broke with precedent last year by meeting the Dalai Lama in her office.
The Merkel meeting with the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet immediately provoked a wave of protests by China, whose leadership threatened that important trade and economic ties would be damaged as a result.
The Chinese authorities did go ahead and cancel some meetings with their German counterparts, including awkward ones for Beijing because they involved establishing a regular dialogue on human rights and the rule of law. But there was no negative effect on trade.
During a news conference with his Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, in Beijing on Friday, Steinmeier said, “We will resume the interrupted strategic dialogue in the second half of the year.”
Yang agreed that, recently, “China-Germany relations have already moved onto a track of normal development.”
Despite all the warnings from the Chinese leadership and from German industry that trade would suffer because of Merkel’s stance on Tibet and human rights in China, it has not.
If anything, it is flourishing, according to the Federal Association of German Industry, which said Friday that “no contracts were affected.” Total trade between Germany and China reached €7.9 billion, or $12.2 billion, in January, up 16.49 percent from the same month last year, according to the most recent figures released by German Federal Statistics Office. German imports from China totaled €5.2 billion, an increase of more than 11 percent, and exports to China reached €2.7 billion, up 27 percent year-on-year.
Steinmeier, a Social Democrat and vice chancellor, has generally steered clear of human rights issues, instead promoting himself as the diplomat who mended ties between Berlin and Beijing.
But foreign policy experts in Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union party said Friday that the chancellor had been in regular contact with her Chinese counterparts.
Ulrich Wilhelm, the German government spokesman, said in the past week that Merkel spoke by telephone with the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, “as part of the regular contacts.” She pledged to provide more aid for the devastated region of Sichuan, which was struck by an earthquake last month that killed tens of thousands of people and left millions homeless.
Merkel also welcomed the resumption of a dialogue between the Chinese authorities and representatives of the Dalai Lama, which she consistently called for while Steinmeier refused to meet the Dalai Lama when he was in Germany last year and last month.
Steinmeier had assailed Merkel earlier this year while addressing a party congress. He said Merkel’s policy of publicly speaking out about human rights and the lack of press freedom in Russia and China was more about winning cheap publicity at the expense of pursuing a policy of quite diplomacy.
But in Beijing, Steinmeier changed his tone Friday and said that he hoped more talks would resume soon between China and the Dalai Lama’s representatives, and that “this will also lead to progress on advancing and protecting Tibetans’ culture and religion.”
