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Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomes his Norwegian counterpart Ine Eriksen Soreide to Oslo.
Photo: HEIKO JUNGE / AFP
For China's foreign minister there was not much to gain on this trip - it was clear from the start.
Not even a face-saving degree in Germany is certain.
Wang Yi has been touring Europe since Tuesday, five countries in seven days. Today, Monday, Berlin was on the program.
The trip is important for Beijing, after all, it is the first of the Chinese chief diplomat since February.
But at all previous stages, China critics made every effort to brand him as a representative of an injustice state.
China's relationship with the West has deteriorated dramatically since the corona pandemic began.
The memory that Chinese officials initially covered up the outbreak has now faded in China, but all the more vivid abroad.
Leaked documents document the suppression of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang better and better.
The submission of Hong Kong to the Beijing government has sparked outrage in the West, and the threats made against Taiwan have caused nervousness.
Then there is the controversy about the Chinese network equipment supplier Huawei.
"This point in time marks the low point not only in relations between China and the US, but also between China and the rest of the international community," said Wu Qiang, who has lost his position as a political lecturer at Beijing's Tsinghua University because of his anti-government stance .
"The situation is so dire that even damage control is a fairly high standard," says Shi Yinhong, a professor of politics at Beijing's Renmin University.
Foreign Minister Wang wants to prevent "Europe from slipping completely into the American camp".
New cold war
In an approaching new Cold War, as many observers are predicting, it is of great importance for both China and the US how Europeans position themselves.
Washington wants to pull them to their own side.
It would be a success for Beijing to prevent a united front in the West.
The Trump administration recently made a few points: In July and August, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo toured Europe twice.
In London, he congratulated Boris Johnson on the UK's decision to exclude Huawei from the 5G network.
In the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, he signed a joint anti-Huawei declaration.
With Prague, Pompeo visited a capital that recently terminated its twinning with Beijing in favor of one with Taipei, Taiwan.
"There is not much of a difference between Europe and the US," said Politics Professor Shi. "Unfortunately, all highly developed European countries take almost the same positions, namely those of foreign policy hawks."
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Mike Pompeo in Central Eastern Europe: The Anti-China Trip by Jan Puhl and Walter Mayr, Hamburg and Vienna
In view of this climate, all sides had initially tried to allow Wang's European trip to go on unobtrusively.
In some European capitals, the scheduled dates could only be found out on request, while the Chinese state media reported reluctantly.
But activists and parliamentarians in Europe did not even think about keeping quiet.
Nobel Peace Prize to the Hong Kong protest movement?
Wang first landed in Italy, the only G7 country that has joined China's Silk Road initiative.
If Wang had hoped for a noiseless reception there, he was disappointed: shortly before his visit, the activist Nathan Law, who had fled from Hong Kong, appeared in Rome to commemorate the fate of his city.
He received support from 17 members of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC), an international alliance of members critical of China.
Italy's Foreign Minister Luigi di Maio promptly warned that Hong Kong's autonomy was not an option.
In the Netherlands, the parliamentary foreign affairs committee invited Wang to discuss the human rights situation in his country - a provocative act that the Chinese refused.
In Norway, MP Trine Skei Grande led a demonstration critical of China.
At a press conference in Oslo, Wang was confronted with the uncomfortable assumption that the Nobel Peace Prize this year could go to the Hong Kong protest movement.
In Paris, the presidential office announced that Emmanuel Macron had told Wang that he was "very concerned" about the situation of the Uyghurs and in Hong Kong.
Even the EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell spoke up: He not only described China as a "new empire", but also called for the EU to "correct" its economic balance sheet with the People's Republic before it was "too late".
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As the last stop on his journey, Wang is now coming to Germany, immediately after the Berlin riot weekend, which in Chinese eyes may have looked bizarre.
The German Corona rules are mild compared to the Chinese and government-critical demonstrations are banned anyway.
Just in time for Wang's visit, it became clear once again how fundamentally different the political systems of China and Europe are
Beijing's most important partner in Europe
Berlin Beijing is considered to be the most important partner in Europe.
China does not trade as much with any other EU country.
So far, the federal government has left the question of whether Huawei is allowed to participate in the German 5G network.
The federal government in Beijing is also considered to be comparatively conciliatory on other sensitive issues.
To assume that Wang hopes for a conciliatory end to this messed-up journey on his last stage.
But the federal government is also under increasing pressure to take a tougher line.
Three members of the Bundestag who belong to the IPAC have asked Foreign Minister Heiko Maas to put an end to German restraint.
And civil rights activist Nathan Law called in a letter to Maas that Germany must redefine EU relations with China during its presidency and finally implement a "value-oriented trade policy".
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