China changes approach - professor is convinced: "The old rules no longer apply"

Created: 01/11/2022, 2:15 PM

From: China.Table

Sinology professor Klaus Mühlhahn, President of Zeppelin University Friedrichshafen © Zeppelin University / Ilja Mess

The conflict over the automotive supplier Continental shows how contentious China is now.

The sinologist Klaus Mühlhahn explains why the irritable mood will not change for the time being.

• In an interview with

  China.Table

  , Sinology professor Klaus Mühlhahn warns of a lack of reliable information about China. 

• China has become more irritable.

  According to Mühlhahn, the predictability of global conflicts will therefore continue to decrease in 2022.

• The corona pandemic makes personal exchange between China and Germany more difficult.

• This interview is 

  available to IPPEN.MEDIA

   as part of a cooperation with the 

  China.Table Professional Briefing

   - it was first published by 

  China.Table

   on December 28, 2021.

Friedrichshafen / Berlin - Klaus Mühlhahn is Professor of Chinese Studies at the Free University of Berlin and has been President of Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen for five years since June 2020.

He has a background in social and historical sciences.

In 2021 he published: “The Chinese Communist Party: A Century in Ten Lives” and “History of Modern China: From the Qing Dynasty to the Present”.

For 2022 he plans to publish the book "Hong Kong: Contested Metropolis from 1841 to Today" together with Julia Haes.

The case of China, Lithuania and Continental is currently moving people's hearts.

For the first time, China is attacking the auto industry of its partner country Germany.

What does that tell us?

Indeed, this suggests a new approach in trade policy.

China is now also starting to use supply chains as a political tool.

Goods with intermediate products from Lithuania should be labeled as such, and then such products may no longer be sold to China *.

This political instrumentalization of supply chains was first used on a large scale by Donald Trump.

What is new, however, is that China is taking up this practice.

China also wants to use its economic weight politically.

At the same time, it looks as if the predictability of behavior is decreasing on all sides.

In any case, this is a great risk for the future and especially for the year 2022. For a long time, states and institutions have followed unwritten and written rules that have ruled the way we live together in the world over the past three decades.

China was even a relatively reliable player here.

This era is now ending.

The rules no longer apply like this.

As a result, the predictability disappears.

However, nobody knows what the new rules of the game will be.

Therefore, the risk of unintended side effects increases for both the Chinese economy and the world economy.

The actors are behaving increasingly unpredictably.

You can now see that in the events around Lithuania *.

China has become more irritable.

At the same time, the country is now more willing to take risks.

Lithuania is a beautiful country - I definitely don't want to reset it now - but it's also a very small country.

China's violent reaction bears no relation to Lithuania's political weight.

If China hadn't reacted at all, the potential damage to all sides would have been minimal.

China reacted surprisingly irritably to a secondary issue.

China is becoming increasingly irritated on geopolitical issues

Why didn't big China sovereignly overlook the actions of little Lithuania?

China would probably have reacted this way in the past.

It would have officially presented the process as unimportant and tried to isolate Lithuania * behind the scenes.

Today you go public with it and do exactly the opposite: the affair becomes a European and German affair.

Why this escalation?

In China's foreign trade policy, Xi Jinping's * handwriting as President is becoming increasingly clear.

We only see a few other decision-makers at all.

It was definitely different in the past, there were a large number of foreign politicians who shaped politics together.

I do believe that the current course has a lot to do with the fact that Xi has defined foreign policy as a priority for himself.

Here he wants to score points by showing the strength and self-confidence of China.

The question remains why a skilled strategist like Xi pursues such an unsubtle foreign policy.

Xi Jinping is a very clever strategist indeed.

But he's also very ambitious.

In foreign policy we see a clear departure from the past.

There was a consensus among his predecessors to act cautiously internationally.

There was actually never a single clear word.

In comparison, China has now become downright argumentative *.

There is also a message behind this to the masses.

Xi presents his China as an emphatically self-confident country.

China: Xi Jinping's foreign policy also motivated domestically - People's Republic facing several crises

So the message goes inwards?

What is often overlooked from the outside are the major challenges that management faces.

In my opinion, there is a kind of crisis awareness.

In the coming year, 1.2 million university graduates will enter the labor market for whom there are actually no job opportunities.

These distortions can be whitewashed internally through foreign policy behavior.

The rhetoric of national greatness is used here in a very targeted manner.

Nationalism is also inextricably mixed with a cult around the person Xi.

Does he install himself as sole ruler?

We see at least a clear consolidation in the Communist Party *.

At the 6th plenary session, a lot of groundwork was set.

The resolution on the history of the party was less about history than about the future.

But the achievement of the resolution is even more important than the content.

Only the strongest leaders could achieve this.

In China, too, the resolution is the result of a lengthy discussion process * full of risks.

The unified picture that emerges is remarkable.

Almost no other voices can be heard from China.

Are the other voices no longer there?

Have the other opinions already fallen silent or are we just not hearing them?

We are facing what I would call the "epistemic challenge".

So the question of what we can still know about the country in view of the isolation and how we can get that knowledge.

We only read the official announcements from China, no matter where we look.

Our China analysis is based on this.

In the end, we all do coffee grounds reading with a very limited number of documents.

Just imagine, as a journalist in the capital, you would analyze German politics only on the basis of party programs and official press releases.

The result would be pretty poor indeed.

And yet, that's exactly what we're doing with China.

To be honest, we have to say to commentators: this is a black box and we don't really know what is going on in it.

We can't go there either.

China and Germany: Corona pandemic ended personal exchanges

The end of personal exchanges was perhaps one of the most dramatic changes in the past two years.

Can those involved in dealing with China still make informed decisions?

Precise information is very important for risk assessment.

And now we're basically doing this on the basis of very limited data.

Together we face the challenge of finding new approaches and sources of information.

The new federal government is also facing this problem.

There are hardly any channels through which one can sound out in advance of a decision what is possible with China and what is not.

This increases the risk that measures will not have the desired effect.

This can potentially be problematic with a federal government that has not yet developed a clear position with regard to China *.

The various ministries should now quickly enter into discussions with business and form a strategy from this.

But I think it will take time.

The danger now is that at this time on the German side, due to inexperience, one canters each other or trespasses.

This also increases the risk of fatal misjudgments.

As a historian, the current situation reminds me more and more of the situation before the First World War.

We have the same confusion, the same dominance of national interests.

We have the same willingness to use trade as a weapon, reducing similarities and highlighting differences.

Despite all mutual criticism, we need a focus on common ground.

It is correct that values ​​should play a role in relation to China *.

But you also need a realistic weighing of all goals.

In the end, pragmatism is required and an orientation towards real success instead of rhetoric.

What can we do to reopen more channels for conversation?

In any case, it will be urgently necessary to get back into the conversation and activate previously unused contacts.

Representatives of the Chinese economy or science can also be addressed here, for example.

We should have this dialogue much more often, and we really don't do that anymore.

As I said, we are in a crisis of information gathering.

We need to learn a lot more about what's going on on the Chinese side.

China in 2022: groundbreaking party conference of the CP in autumn

What can we know about what is going on in the party?

For example, 2022 will bring us one of the party congresses that only take place every five years.

It will be the most important party congress in a very long time.

A large part of the leadership, including those below the Politburo, will likely be replaced.

Something like this last happened in the 1980s.

The generation of reform policy resigns.

Afterward, we will see even greater control from Xi Jinping.

And of course the official extension of his term of office *.

This brings it even more to the fore.

The diversity in the party is becoming less and less visible.

We see the end of Deng Xiaoping's political system, which provided for collective rule with elements of mutual surveillance.

The party continues to take part in this dismantling?

She goes along with it, but the risks for Xi Jinping also increase.

Because what is good for him is not necessarily good for the party.

The collective leadership and consensus orientation was the secret of the party's success.

Limiting terms of office was an important element here.

This long balancing out and looking for common ground behind closed doors, which used to determine politics in China, is more or less gone.

This begs the question: Can the party still be successful there in the future?

Or degenerate this system into a personal regiment with all the risks.

What harms China now also harms Germany.

On the other hand, as the tone becomes more aggressive, the interconnectedness of the world increases more and more.

Young people in China are still very interested in the world, in traveling, in exchange, in Western music, in films.

Limiting access to the world can be very damaging to the system.

Even if only a little gets out, it's pretty clear that not everyone is enthusiastic.

The interview was conducted by Finn Mayer-Kuckuk.

has been editor-in-chief of the

since May 2021 

.

Before that, he was the capital correspondent for the Federal Press Conference in Berlin and China correspondent for the 

 and the DuMont Group, among others.

Among other things, he reports on the interaction between the Chinese and German economies, digitization and IT, as well as China trends in the German capital.

This article appeared on

 December 21

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