Foreign investment in China is ‘not a level playing field, but a one-way street’
German ambassador to China Michael Clauss explained to the South China Morning Post in a recent interview Berlin’s reasons for its review of acquisitions of German companies by non-EU countries, in particular China
Can you comment on reports that the German government is planning to review its laws about the acquisition of German companies by non-EU countries, especially China?
Sino-German economic ties continue to flourish steadily, notwithstanding a difficult global economic environment. We both have greatly profited from globalisation and there is much potential still left untapped. But recently there is also a growing concern about an imbalance in terms of openness of our respective economies. We are the most open economy for Chinese investment, including the cutting-edge hi-tech sector, as witnessed by a more than 20-fold increase in the first half of 2016 compared to the same period in 2015.
Precisely because China has been successfully catching up, calls for reciprocity have become more urgent. Companies not just from Germany but from all of China’s major trading partners are growing restless, complaining that investor relations cannot remain a one-way street. However, despite repeated declarations of intent there is no progress on market access, rather, market access is restricted even further.
Which sectors are most affected, and what protection measures have been used?
We are registering an unprecedented wave of complaints from a wide array of sectors.
German exporters of agricultural products, for example, face new and unreasonable bureaucratic hurdles in China. Chinese authorities are planning to require import certificates for all imported food products. International standards require certificates only for high-risk foods such as meat. Germany, like any other foreign country, obviously does not have the administrative capacity to check and license every single cookie exported to China.