The assessment of Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s recent visit to the People’s Republic of China is ongoing. This is what philosopher Richard David Precht said in his podcast conversation with moderator Markus Lanz about the visit of the Green politician and criticized it sharply.
Baerbock would gamble away Germany’s reputation in the People’s Republic, she has no idea about foreign policy and hasn’t even gotten an internship at the Foreign Ministry, says the philosopher. His substantive criticism relates primarily to three points:
Precht vs. Baerbock: The minister did not proselytize with Western values
“The Chinese” would only take Germany “with all the bells and whistles” seriously as long as it was economically successful, says Precht. If the bridges to China were torn down, the German economy would “go down the drain”, “and then nobody would take our western values seriously”. According to Precht, one cannot “use these values as a weapon to tell others that we are the morally superior”.
The fact is: No one intends to burn all bridges to China. The “de-risking” proposed by Ursula von der Leyen when dealing with Beijing, which was also well received in Berlin, wants key industries to reduce their dependence on China. At the same time, cooperation with China should continue in places where there is no potential for political blackmail through economic ties.
The minister’s alleged proselytizing with Western values also did not take place. Rather, Baerbock recalled the international obligations of the People’s Republic of China as part of its membership in the United Nations. The commitment to global norms and universal values enshrined in the founding documents of the UN is an achievement that thinkers like Cicero and Erasmus of Rotterdam have dreamed of over the centuries. Their legal validity and binding nature cannot be compared with the content of religious missions.
Precht attacks Beijing’s rhetorical rhetoric and repeats the “colonialism argument”
Baerbock’s call on Beijing to refrain from war with Taiwan and to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait is the international consensus on island democracy and Beijing’s dictatorship. To dismiss this as proselytizing with the value of peace simply does not do justice to the situation and is factually incorrect.
The foreign policy consensus from Washington to Tokyo is that the “status quo” on Taiwan should be maintained. It cannot be seen where Baerbock should have galloped here in any way.
The fact that Precht falls for Beijing’s rhetorical tirade and repeats Foreign Minister Qin Gang’s “colonialism argument” shows how little he is familiar with the propaganda of the Communist Party and how little he understands how totalitarian systems communicate.
The Chinese leadership would like to make trade with the People’s Republic palatable to the dictators of this world without these rulers having to worry about human rights. That means Beijing doesn’t care whether there is slave or human trafficking, sexual exploitation or the overexploitation of nature in the countries it trades with. The free world, on the other hand, which, for example, denounces slave labor in the Chinese province of Xinjiang and sanctions goods that come from there, is quite right to do so.
“Culture of Age Wisdom”?
As the conversation continued, Precht insisted: . The Chinese have a “culture of age wisdom”. If someone speaks to you without their own “lifetime achievement”, it is “not entirely unimportant”.
The fact is: In Xi’s China, loyalty to the party is all that counts, not a person’s performance in office. At the last people’s congress in March, only Xi’s confidants achieved high ranks. Prime Minister Li Keqiang, on the other hand, was eliminated even though he had not yet reached the age limit and could have served another term. But he was not in line with ruler Xi’s ideology on all points. In the pure teaching of Confucius, on the other hand, only the achievement counts. The teacher is an ardent advocate of meritocracy, meaning that only merit qualifies for public office. Confucius introduced an elaborate process of examining these offices in order to win only the best. Under Xi, this practice is history, even if he always talks about Confucius from propaganda Greens.
“Confrontational Foreign Policy”?
Finally, Precht claims that Baerbock’s “values-led foreign policy” is in fact a “confrontation-led foreign policy.”
The fact is: There is no question that Beijing’s dictatorship does not share the values of the free world. In addition, for Xi Jinping everything that happens inside China, but also outside, that does not correspond to his views is lese-majeste. Beijing will therefore certainly not have been happy about Baerbock’s criticism. Your colleague Qin Gang ultimately banned any comment on the situation in China out of interference in internal affairs.
Baerbock’s age doesn’t really matter here, since China refuses statements about its many violations of human rights, even from politicians who are older and have been in office longer than they are. The “confrontation” consists in the fact that the People’s Republic of China does not recognize the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although it sees itself as the successor to the Republic of China, which was overthrown by Mao Zedong and which, as a founding member of the United Nations, supported this declaration.
