China's attitude irritates Germany. The German defense minister on Saturday asked Beijing to stop recruiting former members of the Luftwaffe to train its own pilots in China, Berlin fearing that NATO secrets would be revealed.
"I raised the issue of German Bundeswehr pilots who have apparently been recruited to train Chinese pilots," Pistorius told reporters following talks with his Chinese counterpart Li Shangfu Li on the sidelines of a defense and security conference in Singapore.
"I made it clear that I expected this practice to stop immediately and I told him that he himself would probably not be very happy if I tried to do the same thing myself," he added, according to statements provided to the press by his ministry. The Chinese minister "did not deny, but he relativized from his point of view the scope" of this case, he said.
Two German media outlets, the weekly Der Spiegel and the state-run ZDF television channel, revealed on Friday that several former German air force pilots had been recruited for several years by China to train its own pilots. Their salaries would be channelled through shell companies based in Seychelles. Some of them were reportedly employed by the company of a member of the Chinese secret service.
Fear of betrayal of state secrets
The case, according to these media, has been of concern for several weeks to the control committee of the secret service of the German Chamber of Deputies. "We are worried that military personnel, after having worked for the German state, may have jobs that lead them to betray state secrets," committee chairman Konstantin von Notz told ZDF.
The German military concerned were Eurofighter fighter pilots and were integrated into NATO exercises. Berlin fears that the Atlantic Alliance's operational secrets and tactics could be revealed to China.
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The Defense Ministry has planned to open an investigation, according to ZDF, while similar cases have come to light in recent years in the United Kingdom and the United States. The case comes as tensions between China and Taiwan have risen sharply in recent months.
Since the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949, China has regarded Taiwan as a province it has not yet managed to reunify with the rest of its territory. China has multiplied military incursions around the island.