00:00Well, let's stick with this China-Germany relationship.
00:03Antonin Finkelberg is the Director General of the Federation of German Wholesale Foreign Trade and Services.
00:11I think it's quite a successful visit in terms of getting to know each other.
00:16The new German government has a quite distinct, differently, opinion versus China and attitude.
00:22And I think that is, in the long run, quite helpful to treat each other as partners and competition as
00:29alike.
00:30And how important is that sense of getting to know you, that face-to-face diplomacy, shaking someone's hands as
00:36opposed to doing this stuff on Zoom or something like that?
00:41In economic relations, especially between states as important as China and Germany, it's more important to talk to each other
00:51than about each other.
00:52And we are talking about a dialogue that we need to start with many important economical and political questions attached.
01:00So having the face-to-face is, in my opinion, quite, quite helpful.
01:05Well, let's talk about some of those questions.
01:07What are German companies telling you what they want from this relationship with China?
01:13I think everyone recognizes that China has become an extremely powerful part of the global economy, maybe the most powerful
01:23by now.
01:24And with that power comes a lot of responsibility.
01:27And that's something that German companies want.
01:30They want stable relations.
01:31They want open markets.
01:32They want a fair competition.
01:35And they also want China to play a responsible part in the geopolitical sphere.
01:39Germany's Chancellor says challenges, including Chinese overcapacity, remain above all.
01:46There are issues relating to competition.
01:49China has high capacities, some of which are now posing a problem for Europe because, he says, they far exceed
01:57market demand.
01:58Is this just a German problem or is it a wider European problem?
02:03It's a European problem, but it's a German problem also because Germany is still the third largest economy in the
02:11world.
02:12Therefore, we are much more export-oriented than our European neighbors.
02:16Therefore, it affects us more than others.
02:18But overall, the question of the European trade balance to China and vice versa is a European issue as much
02:26as competitiveness.
02:28So, we are not complaining about Chinese competitiveness.
02:31We can learn from that.
02:33And what we want is fair market access and the same rules applying to everyone.
02:38So, we can learn from the European trade balance to China and the European trade balance to China and the
02:38European trade balance to China.
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