00:00Well, Michael Schaefer is the chairman of the board of directors of the BMW Foundation and also a former German ambassador to China.
00:08He's been talking to our correspondent, Natalie Carney.
00:12Well, I think it's a very important visit.
00:16Over the last few years, a lot of trust has been lost.
00:21The Europeans are much more critical of China today, and that's why I think it is extremely important for a politician like Wang Yi to conduct his talks in Brussels, Paris, Berlin, with a view of re-establishing trust and to reset a partnership which has been quite successful over the years.
00:50Now, you've observed both China's rise and Europe's evolving stance on that rise over the last decades.
00:58How has the relationship between China and Europe transformed over, say, the past 50 years?
01:04And what phase do you think we're entering into now?
01:07Well, I think we must understand the geopolitical framework has changed dramatically.
01:13For the first 40 years of relations between Europe and China, our relationship was based on sound economic cooperation.
01:26We must not forget that the background of this phase was a rules-based international order.
01:37We both profited from the WTO, the World Trade Organization, more than any other country in the world.
01:49We are moving into an age of conflict and war if we are not capable of restoring a rules-based international order on the basis of the existing one,
02:06because we need this consensus, how to, so to say, realign our interests despite sometimes different values.
02:19Now, you touched on trust earlier.
02:22How can Europe and China rebuild that trust?
02:25Can dialogue alone suffice?
02:27Or do you believe that a more structural cooperation is needed to rebuild trust?
02:32That's a good question.
02:33I think it's not the lack of structures.
02:39It's the lack of the political will to really use these structures to listen to each other,
02:48to understand where the other side comes from, what the key interests are,
02:54how we can, so to say, bring values into tune,
02:59because values are part of our interests,
03:02and it is more the readiness to deploy the political will to listen and work in partnership with the other side.
