German leader to make his 1st visit to China next week as country seeks 'right balance' in ties

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BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz will make his first visit to China next week since taking the helm of Europe's biggest economy, as he tries to position the country to a world in which assertive great powers play an increasingly dominant role.

Merz will be received in Beijing on Wednesday by Premier Li Qiang and Chinese leader Xi Jinping, government spokesperson Sebastian Hille said Friday. He will also visit Hangzhou in southeastern China.

The theme of the trip will be “competition,” Hille told reporters in Berlin, and “the right balance of cooperation” with the Asian power will be one major theme. “We want cooperation where it is necessary and in our mutual interest,” he added.

Germany has tried in recent years to maintain solid ties with China despite wariness over Beijing's growing assertiveness and refusal to criticize the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while also seeking to avoid overreliance on trade with China and diversifying its commercial links and supplies of key goods.

Germany's Federal Statistical Office said Friday that China reclaimed its place as the country's biggest single trading partner last year, with exports and imports totaling 251.8 billion euros ($297 billion). China already held the title from 2016-2023, but was displaced in 2024 by the United States. While trade with China grew last year, that with the U.S. dropped to 240.5 billion euros.

The chancellor, who took office in May, told a convention of his Christian Democratic Union party in Stuttgart that “we need business ties in the whole world, and that of course also includes a country like China.” He said that “China is an important trading partner for us, so I will go to China next week with a large business delegation.”

Neither he nor Hille specified who will be part of that delegation.

But Merz also said Germany should have no “illusions” about China, which he said “asserts the claim to define a new multilateral order according to its own rules.”

In his speech, Merz reiterated that the familiar rules-based order as it has long been known no longer exists, and that “a new world order, an order of great powers, is taking shape at high speed.” He emphasized that Europe needs to become economically and militarily stronger, and that it needs to press ahead in seeking trade deals with more partners.

U.S. President Donald Trump is due to visit China in April.