Chen is a researcher at the Institute of International Finance in Lujiazui, Central Europe (600663). Photo courtesy of the author
On October 4th, 2022/KLOC-0, German Chancellor Angela Schulz will pay an official visit to China at the invitation of Li Keqiang, Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, People's Republic of China (PRC). This time, Schultz will lead a business delegation to China, including President of Volkswagen, President of Siemens, CEO of merck kgaa, CEO of Deutsche Bank, Chairman of the Executive Board of BASF Europe, CEO and co-founder of BioNTech, a German pharmaceutical company.
Scholz is the first G7*** delegation to visit China since the COVID-19 outbreak. His arrival with the German business delegation is of great symbolic and substantive significance to China-Germany and China-EU relations.
Under the background of great downward pressure on global economic growth, although major economies are also adjusting their economic development strategies, Scholz's visit shows that Germany firmly believes that the EU needs to maintain cooperation with China in many aspects in the future, including not only the cooperation between China and Germany in traditional fields such as trade and investment, but also the cooperation in emerging fields such as green economic transformation, international cooperation in tackling climate change, and supply chain diversification.
The economic advantages of China and Germany are highly complementary, and China has been Germany's most important trading partner for six consecutive years.
On June 5438+1October1day, 2022, the World Economic Outlook published by IMF predicted that the global economic growth rate would slow down from 3.2% in 2022 to 2.7% in 2023. The prospect of European countries caught in the whirlpool of Russia-Ukraine conflict is even more bleak, mainly manifested in the sharp slowdown in economic growth and high inflation. Among them, the GDP growth rate of developed and emerging economies in Europe will decrease from 3.2% and 1.2% in 2022 to 0.6% and 0.5% in 2023, and it is estimated that the inflation rate will remain at historical highs of 8.3% and 30.6% in 2022. 10 The latest statistics released by the German Federal Statistical Office 10 on October 28th show that thanks to the resilience of private consumption, Germany's total economic output reached 966.2 billion euros in the third quarter, and the growth rate unexpectedly increased from 0. 1% in the second quarter to 0.3% in the third quarter. However, in view of Germany's inflation rate of 5438+00 in June, which hit a new high (1 951) since June, especially the current high energy cost has not been completely passed on to consumers, the European Central Bank is likely to continue to implement tight monetary policy, which will undoubtedly aggravate the recession in the euro zone including Germany. Therefore, in this forecast report, the IMF lowered Germany's economic growth forecast in 2022 and 2023 to 1.5% and -0.3% respectively.
In recent years, pragmatic economic and trade cooperation between China and Germany has achieved fruitful results. As the economic advantages of China and Germany are highly complementary, while China is expanding its market opening and promoting the transformation and upgrading of its own manufacturing industry, Germany actively seizes the opportunity to deepen the China market with the help of the advantages of the world's advanced manufacturing industry. By the end of 20021,China has been the most important German trading partner for six consecutive years. Statistics from Eurostat show that in 20021year, the total bilateral trade between China and Germany reached 245.3 billion euros, accounting for 10% of the total German trade and about 35% of the total Sino-European trade.
The economic and trade cooperation between the two countries is stable. In 2022, Germany's enthusiasm for investment in China continued to climb.
Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in early 2022, under the superposition of global epidemic and energy crisis, although the new German Coalition government has some differences in its economic policy toward China, Sino-German cooperation in the economic and trade field has remained stable, which fully reflects the great potential and strong resilience of Sino-German cooperation. On the one hand, the statistics of the German General Administration of Customs show that from June 5438 to September 2022, the total bilateral trade between China and Germany increased slightly by 0.9% year-on-year, amounting to about162.9 billion euros. During this period, China's imports from Germany decreased by 6. 1% to 79.5 billion euros, while its exports increased by 8.6% to 83.4 billion euros. On the other hand, in 2022, the investment scale of German enterprises in China will continue to grow. According to the research report of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), German direct investment in China reached 1-6 months in 2022, a record high, far exceeding the peak of 6.2 billion euros in the same period in the past 22 years. Further data analysis by the German Federal Bank shows that at least 50% of German enterprises' investment in the first half of 2022 is reinvested in their China subsidiaries.
Since 2022, German investment in China has continued to climb, and a number of investment projects have been developed, the most striking of which includes BMW's investment in a factory worth billions of euros in Shenyang in early 2022, which is the largest investment in the China market ever; Audi spent about 2.6 billion euros to build the first new factory to produce pure electric vehicles in China; In September, the integrated base project invested by BASF in Zhanjiang was fully completed and the first set of equipment was put into production. This is one of the largest single foreign investment projects of German enterprises in China, and the total investment planned by the Group by 2030 will be as high as 654.38+00 billion euros. On June+10, 5438, Volkswagen announced that it would invest 2.4 billion euros to jointly establish a technology development company focusing on autonomous driving with Horizon, an intelligent computing platform provider in China. This is the largest single investment record since Volkswagen entered China 40 years ago. The landing and active promotion of these large-scale investment projects have fully demonstrated the willingness and confidence of German enterprises to invest in China. However, it is worth noting that compared with the scale of Sino-German trade, the scale of German investment in China is relatively low, and the investment projects are basically concentrated in large multinational German enterprises, while the investment activities of small German enterprises are few. According to the research report released by Rongding Group in September, in the past four years, the total investment of German chemical giant BASF and three German car companies-BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz in China accounted for 34% of the total direct investment in Europe.
Sino-German economic and trade cooperation can be deepened and realized in many fields, especially in the field of green economy transformation.
Against the background that the global epidemic has not completely subsided and European countries are striving to fight against the energy crisis and high inflation, the German Chancellor and a high-level German business delegation visited China, which has released a good signal for the future economic and trade cooperation between China and Germany and China and Europe. As the second and fourth largest economies in the world, China and Germany have broad common interests, broad market opportunities and great power responsibilities. Looking forward to the future, Sino-German economic and trade cooperation can continue to deepen in many fields, especially in the field of green economic transformation that the EU is currently facing many difficulties.
At the end of 20 19, the new European commission issued the "Green New Deal for Europe" at the beginning of its appointment, which established the most important and complete green policy framework and growth strategy of the EU so far, and promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 55% on the basis of 1990 in 2030, and Europe will become the first continent to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. Based on this, Germany has set a higher national climate goal, that is, greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by 65% compared with the level of 1990 in 2030 and carbon neutrality will be achieved in 2045. Compared with the unified goal set by the European Union, Germany has advanced the carbon-neutral schedule by five years. The main purpose of this move is to put more emission reduction tasks in the present, not to postpone them to the next generation. Although Germany has a good foundation in promoting green transformation and development, the outbreak of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has led to a sharp deterioration of German-Russian relations, forcing Germany to re-examine its green transformation strategy, especially in the energy field.
With EU countries speeding up the search for alternative energy transformation schemes, China is playing an increasingly important role in renewable energy technology and supply chain, and the cooperation between Germany and China in this field is expected to achieve a breakthrough in the future. First of all, in the field of solar energy (00059 1), most of the global manufacturing chains are concentrated in China. Among the top ten polysilicon producers in the world, seven are from China. The output of silicon ingots and wafers in China accounts for 97% of the world's total output. At present, most German solar equipment companies assemble templates imported from China. Secondly, in terms of storage battery and storage technology, China can also provide raw materials such as cobalt, nickel and lithium for storage batteries. According to the data of Rongding Group, at present, China's lithium cobalt smelting capacity accounts for more than 60% of the global production capacity, and the output of anode, cathode, separator and electrolyte also accounts for more than 60% of the global production, and the output of battery chips accounts for nearly 80% of the global production. Thirdly, in the field of wind energy, China can provide German with major raw materials, such as neodymium for the production of wind turbines. In addition, China also occupies a leading position in the global market in the manufacture and assembly of wind turbines, which provides a solid foundation for further cooperation between China and Germany.
At the same time, as Germany expects to vigorously develop renewable energy, foreign investors are more likely to get investment subsidies and participate in investment projects in Germany. On July 7th, the German Bundestag passed the "Osterpaket" energy plan, which aims to greatly accelerate the transformation of Germany's energy infrastructure to 65,438+0,000% renewable energy. According to the plan, by 2030, the proportion of renewable energy in Germany will reach 80%. To this end, Germany has established a clear power development path, that is, onshore wind energy will expand by 10 GW every year, and solar power generation will reach 22 GW every year. In terms of investment subsidies, the German government has issued a funding plan "Heating Network 4.0" (W? Rmenetze4.0). The plan is mainly aimed at investment subsidies for energy-saving buildings, and the important funding condition is to meet the combination of building energy conservation and renewable energy. In addition to investment subsidies, the German government also hopes to promote the improvement of investment conditions. For example, Germany plans to speed up the upgrading of old wind turbines by simplifying the approval procedures. With the increasing demand for wind turbines in Germany, this coincides with China's advantages in wind turbine manufacturing and assembly and its plan to actively lay out the European market.
2022 marks the 50th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Germany. The pragmatic cooperation between China and Germany in the economic and trade field in the past 50 years is the result of globalization and market operation, which is not only beneficial to the enterprises and people of the two countries, but also lays a solid foundation for the healthy development of Sino-German relations. Coping with climate change and promoting the transformation of green and low-carbon economy are priority areas that the two governments attach great importance to and deepen cooperation. China and Germany will uphold the advantages of the past, highlight the role of big countries, and continue to add new impetus to the sustainable development of the global economy and society with an open attitude.