Beijing may have picked up on mixed messaging this week as to how German-Chinese ties may evolve following September’s election, as the clock ticks on Angela Merkel’s time in office. On Wednesday, the Christian Democratic Union’s (CDU) candidate for chancellor Armin Laschet gave the first major foreign policy speech of his campaign. He promised to maintain the strong trade ties that have seen Germany account for half of all European Union exports to China. He would vote to ratify the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI), an EU-China deal sponsored by Merkel, he told a think tank affiliated with the CDU, drawing attention to “economic relations that are of great relevance to us”. A day later, however, in a European Parliament vote that effectively left the deal dead in the water, not a single MEP from Merkel or Laschet’s party voted to save it. Only one German MEP out of 83 voted against a motion that barred parliamentary debate on the CAI – the left-wing Özlem Demirel. Analysts point to an evolving situation in Germany, where for many years strong trade ties with China have been accepted unquestioningly in mainstream political debate, but which are now being evaluated closely. Under pressure from business, rights groups, voters, and now Joe Biden’s administration in Washington, political leaders are having to craft new China policy on the hoof. Some view Merkel’s stance as out of step with German society, where people are now more concerned about an increasingly strident China. Speaking on a webinar this month, the influential CDU politician and former Merkel cabinet member Norbert Roettgen described the shift happening “not within the government, but within politics and society, including representatives of the economy”. “We have to see and to realise China is the comprehensive challenger of the international order. Not only a challenger, but they have clear ideas of what and how they want to replace core elements of the international order,” Roettgen said. US, EU to hold China to account on ‘trade-distorting policies’ For establishment figures, there is also the added jeopardy of a new and popular contender: the Green Party’s Annalena Baerbock , who is neck and neck with Laschet in the polls. “It is important to note that whatever comes after [Merkel] will be less comfortable for China,” said Janka Oertel, director of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations, who described the Green Party as having “the clearest understanding of the challenge that is coming out of China, in a very sober way”. “This is not the Green Party of decades ago, where it was shrill in a way or when it was crazy, values-driven unrealistic foreign policy [with] a very pragmatic approach about what kind of future does Europe want to build,” she said. Perhaps aware of alienating the business community, Baerbock herself has tried to strike a pragmatic, if much more forceful tone than Merkel on China. “We can say as Europeans that we don’t want products on our common market produced by forced labour,” she told the Atlantic Council think tank earlier this month, referring to alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang . But, she added, “it doesn’t mean saying there is no import-export any more between Europe and China”. Figures from Merkel’s own party have tried to occupy more flexible positions than their leader, proposing a more multifaceted relationship with China than in the past. What is the China-EU CAI and how is it different from a trade deal? Even after being sanctioned by China for his patronage of Taiwan, Michael Gahler, an MEP from the CDU who sits in the centre-right European People’s Party in Brussels, thinks an investment deal with China is a good idea. But he also feels Berlin should be open about China’s human rights problems and voice concerns when necessary. “On the substance, weighing the pros and cons I still have a slight inclination to be in favour of the CAI. But now I’ve already seen some industry representatives are also backing down, started to break down from what I’ve seen among Germans at least,” Gahler said. He hopes that regardless of what happens in September, the middle ground will not be totally eviscerated. “My argument always with regard to China is we can do both: we can trade, and we can argue about the issues that we think need to be addressed,” he said, adding that while Beijing might have sanctioned him, “the Chinese can also not afford” to jeopardise its trading relationship with Germany. Multiple German officials and business figures interviewed by the South China Morning Post said they believed it was possible to maintain steady trading ties with China, even if the tone of the conversation changed after the election. This is despite the fact that other countries who have upped their criticism of China have been punished commercially as a result, with Australia being the most notable example. “We believe in cooperation, but this comes in line with some confrontation and China [accepts] that we are talking about the pain points. In order to secure cooperation, to be silent on problematic issues is not acceptable for us. We have to speak out,” said Wolfgang Niedermark, an executive at the Federation of German Industries (BDI). The BDI is widely accepted to have helped shift the conversation on China in Germany – on issues relating to Xinjiang or China’s industrial practices – and wields substantial heft at election time. There are signs that even before the election, the German political machine is already shifting on China. Last week, a Bundestag hearing debated the use of the term “genocide” to described alleged abuses in Xinjiang , while a supply chain due diligence law that would outlaw forced labour-made goods is moving through the legislative process. These amount to a situation that will be hard to ignore for whoever fills Merkel’s shoes – but so too will the economic realities, said Ariane Reimers, an analyst at the Mercator Institute of China Studies (MERICS) in Berlin. “The German export economy is still dependent on China in many areas and China is Germany’s most important trading partner,” Reimers said. “Whoever moves into the chancellery will have to face the challenges of realpolitik.”