This is because Germany is simply too hooked on exports to China to take a tougher stance on the country’s appalling human-rights record. One in three German cars is sold in China. In 2019, Volkswagen sold nearly 40% of its vehicles in the country, while Mercedes-Benz sold about 700,000passenger cars there. Even within Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, many are critical of her for allowing Germany’s dependence on China for exports, jobs, and incomes to reach such a point.
There is an old adage that when you owe the bank a million, the bank owns you, but when you owe it a billion, you own the bank. Similarly, China can be said to “own” German foreign policy because of the German economy’s dependence on exports. Germany does the exporting, and those persecuted by the Chinese regime do the suffering.
