Germany’s policy towards China has always been strongly driven by business interests. That has resulted in some impressive figures. More than 5,000 German companies operate in China, employing more than one million staff, while for German carmakers like BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes Benz, the country is the most important market, with roughly every third of the cars they produce being sold there. Other industries, including electrical engineering and chemicals have major interests in the world’s second-largest economy; in 2022, Sino-German trade volumes reached a record 298 billion euros ($332 billion). The long-held assumption of German leaders, notably former chancellor Angela Merkel, has been that intensifying mutual trade relations would at some point lead to political change in China, an idea known in German as ‘Wandel durch Handel’ (change through trade). This idea has been a trademark — some would say ‘fig leaf’ — of Germany’s China policy for years. Since th