Earlier this month, Olaf Scholz stirred up some serious discontent among his Western allies as well as his own ministries by being the first European leader to visit China and meet with Xi Jinping after the Party Congress where Xi last month secured a controversial third term in power.
As this week’s cartoon from Niklas ”@Kludd-Niklas” Eriksson shows, the discontent is also related to the fact that Scholz went to Beijing on what was practically a business trip, closely followed by the CEO’s from a dozen of Germany’s biggest companies.
With this trip Scholz managed to both legitimise Xi Jinping’s grip over China and show smaller European allies that the German economy is more important than their security concerns.
In fact, he also managed to work against the interest of a majority of all Germans, as a poll by public broadcaster ZDF showed how 84 percent of the German population want to reduce the economic ties with China.
For sure this irony has not gone lost on them: with the one hand, Berlin tries to get rid of the dependence on Russian gas, and with the other hand, it is increasing its economic independence on China.
This week’s cartoon can be viewed in full size via here.
A full collection of Kludd-Niklas’ works for Kinamedia can be seen via this link.
