Data Speaks: Who is Germany's Most Important Trading Partner for 8 Consecutive Years? China!
How and Why?
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Long time no see, everyone! This is TIAN in Beijing.
Today marks the first Monday after the Chinese Spring Festival holiday. As promised, I'd like to share with you the inaugural update of our new column, "Data Speaks," following its success with a 75 percent vote in the poll I conducted one week ago ICYMI). With your kind support, I will try my best to make this a weekly feature.
Data speaks for itself.
In this debut edition, I invite you to delve into the bilateral trade between China and Germany, the 2nd and 3rd largest economies globally.
During the Chinese Spring Festival holiday on Feb. 14, Germany's Federal Statistical Office published its annual trade report. The report stated that "goods worth 253.1 billion euros (about 272.7 billion U.S. dollars) were traded between Germany and the People's Republic of China in 2023 (exports and imports)." This positions China as "Germany's most important trading partner in 2023" for the eighth consecutive year.
In 2016, China became Germany's largest trading partner for the first time, with a bilateral trade volume reaching 151.29 billion U.S. dollars. Since then, the exchanges between the world's two major economic powerhouses have become more frequent and fruitful. By 2022, the bilateral trade volume reached 318.7 billion USD.
For those who appreciate charts:
Impressed? Here's another set of data for you.
According to China’s official media, former German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited China 16 times. She made her first trip to China in 1997 when she served under Kohl as the federal minister of environment, nature conservation, and nuclear safety. In July 2014, she made her first official trip to China after taking the chancellorship. Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited Germany twice and met or held telephone communications with Merkel at least 23 times since he took office as Chinese president. He has also talked to German Chancellor Martin Schulz, Merkel’s successor, at least five times via telephone and face-to-face since Schulz assumed his chancellorship in 2021.
Wow, that’s definitely not the right mode for "decoupling."
In fact, there's another disappointment for those hoping to see a China-Germany decoupling.
A recent report from the German Economic Institute (IW), a private economic research institute in Germany, revealed that German direct investment in China rose by 4.3 percent to a record high of 11.9 billion euros (12.7 billion U.S. dollars) last year.
German firms continue to invest heavily in China, with investment in China as a share of Germany's overall investments abroad reaching 10.3 percent last year—the highest level since 2014. Meanwhile, German direct investments elsewhere in Asia remained stagnant at around 8 percent, according to the IW report.
The report also highlighted that German companies invested as much in China in the last three years as they did in the previous six years.
The bigger picture is: overall German foreign direct investment dropped last year to 116 billion euros (123.8 billion dollars) from around 170 billion euros (181.4 billion dollars) in 2022 as Europe's largest economy hovered on the brink of recession, the IW report said.
Business men has voted China with their investment.
So why bother with “decouple” or “de-risking”?
About the Newsletter:
Ran by TIAN Dongdong, this newsletter features daily, trustworthy content on China's economy and regularly updates the insights of Chinese youth on Sino-US relations. Having worked in Brussels, London, Cairo, and Tripoli for Chinese media as correspondent for several years, TIAN is now based in Beijing.